It bears repeating. These are tough and trying times for all of us and our country. A cocktail of security challenges has put our security forces under tremendous pressure. The pressure to perform and the pressure to be seen to be performing. The situation is both dire and desperate. There seems to be no end to the wanton killings of innocent Nigerians by Boko Haram. The over 200 school girls they kidnapped from a secondary school in Chibok, Borno State, more than two months ago, has put international press on the country and its leadership. And this has added even greater pressure on our security forces; for in their hands lies the assurance we need that there will be tomorrow for our country.
In a dire and desperate situation such as we face, the security forcesoften find it difficult to resist the temptation to resort to illegal and unconstitutional means.They resort to a show of force with wide implications for unintended consequences and collateral damages. As I have cautioned in this column before, the temptation must be resisted. Giving in to it can only lead to unnecessary assault on our rights, liberty and freedom – and thus compound the problems we face.
It is sad to see that the military high command has failed the temptation and resorted to desperate measures in a way hardly guaranteed to win it public applause.Thecalculated and determined assault on the news media inevitably puts a question mark on the practise of our cherished democracy.I am sure the national conference does not intend to pay any attention to the kind of democracy we practise in our dear country.
This may not even be on its agenda. But the honourable members would do well to spare a thought for it. If after sixteen years of uninterrupted democracy such as it is, we are still confronted with the whims and caprices that characterised our long winter of military rule, then something is badly amiss. We cannot pretend to be a democracy when the military exercises undue liberty to padlock our right to know through the only means known to civilized man – the news media.
For more than two weeks now, the Nigerian Army, acting under no laws known to democracy, has subjected selected national newspapers, notably, Leadership, Daily Trust and The Nation, to such a whimsical treatment that clearly constitutes the worst assault on the most important freedom in a democracy – freedom of speech and of the press. If the press, the only institution expressly given the constitutional role to hold government accountable to the people, is not free, then all other forms of freedom are merely dancing in the wind. The excuse offered by the military high command fools no one. In the long, if uneasy, press-government relations in our country, no single newspaper has ever been accused, let alone found guilty of acting in a manner detrimental to national security.
It is an ill-advised act of intimidation and naked subversion of the legitimate rights of the publishers. It also threatens the newspapers in only one fundamental way that matters – their economic survival. The army is holding the knife to their economic throat for no better reason than the nebulous excuse that the military high command is acting on information that borders on security. This is clearly unacceptable in a democracy. It is a viciously conceived methodical assault for the sole purposes of emasculating these publications and frightening others into ‘behaving.’
We had been on this road before. We do not want to walk that path again for it would only hack at the foundation of our democracy. In any case, even under the military, none of the ill-considered actions intended to shackle the press succeeded in shackling it.The Nigerian press emerged from that crucible more vibrant, more courageous,more iconoclastic and more determined to fully perform its professional role of informing and educating the citizenry and its constitutional role of exposing corruption,, inefficiency and failures in governments.
That lesson ought not to have been lost so soon on the military high command. The right to know is the strongest pillar in a democracy. No attempt to deny the people that basic right has ultimately succeeded anywhere in the world. The social media have expanded the frontiers of the freedom of expression and of the press. That makes it virtually impossible for the military to put that freedom under their jackboots as was the case during the military administration. The federal government would be advised not to feel unconcerned about this. It is an ill-wind that would do the government itself no good. In a constitutional government, the military is subject to civil control. This is why the president is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
By allowing the newspapers to be printed but not circulated, the military wants the companies to waste money printing them and lose money by not selling them. This is even a more vicious assault on these companies than even the proscription of newspapers and magazines during the military regime. If, indeed, the aim of the army is to prevent the newspapers from possibly transporting what is suspected to be detrimental to our national security, why attack vendors and seize copies of the newspapers? And what, pray, have they found?
The cordiality of relations between the press and governments and their agencies all over the world is only skin deep. There is no love lost between them. Each regards the other as a necessary evil. Were it left to many governments and their agencies to have no press, they would willingly opt for it.
The snag is that they would have no propaganda weapon. They would merely cut off their noses to spite their faces. It would not necessarily be a bad thing. Some noses are better cut off.
The war against insecurity is everybody’s war. These dire and desperate times call for co-operation among all segments of the Nigerian society. It should not be difficult for the military high command to appreciate that. An infantile show of force is the sure path to the alienation of the news media and the people. In my view, it would make winning the war against the insurgency and other security challenges more complicated than it is now. It is in our collective interest for the military high command to totally end the fiscal and emotional siege on these newspapers. And let it resist the temptation now and in the new future to drag us back to the dark days when we were ruled through the vicious instrumentality of whims and caprices.
