Maurice Iwu

I am, indeed, excited by the opportunity offered me to be here today to speak at the 4th All Nigerian Editors Conference. I have had the opportunity in the past of meeting and exchanging ideas with the Guild of Editors and the quality of that interaction remains pleasant in my memory.I thank you for extending an invitation to me to speak at your 2007 in Bauchi, more so with the most auspicious general theme of the conference; The Media, Electoral Reform and Electoral Management.

I am aware that in its forty six years of existence, the Nigerian Guild of Editors, as with every other human institution, has had its ups and downs. In all these years, however, through the vicissitude of our national evolution and the challenges posed by the various regimes and governments that Nigeria has had, the Nigerian Guild of Editors has remarkably remained a sober professional body, often known for its restraint and high level of maturity and sense of responsibility in addressing critical national issues.

The abiding challenge for the Guild is to translate the restraint and sobriety that have marked its profile through the years to the temperament and disposition that pervade the larger media industry. The country will, no doubt, be better for it if such an order prevails.

Now, concerning the presentation that I have been invited here to make, let me once more remark that I am glad to be here. Having said that, and having looked at the topic I have been asked to speak on, I cannot but observe that the editors have, as it were, given me a very tall order.

I have been tasked to present an Assessment of the Nigerian Media and Elections.

This, clearly, is a topic without borders. Without a defining delimitation of period or years, the topic assigned to me will, inexorably, take us as far back as the Clifford Constitution of 1922, for with that Constitution there was, for the first time, an election of sort, of representatives of Nigerians into government. In truth though, there were only four elected persons into the forty six member Legislative Council and the four elected representatives who were tagged “unofficial members”, representing limited areas of what was then an emerging Nigeria. But all the same, there was an election.

There was also the media, a vibrant, agitating Nigerian media. Nigeria as a sovereign state had not come into being as of then, quite alright, but with the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Nigerian territories in 1914, Nigeria as an entity was already in existence.

Do I stretch my presentation back to these early historical days? Although no knowledge is useless as it is held, and a historical excursion into the first elections in pre-independent Nigeria and the roles of the emerging but strident Nigeria media then could be exciting, I seek your indulgence to fast forward the discussion here from depth of the distant past before Nigeria came into being to the dynamic and challenging present.

There is no doubt in my mind that in inviting me here for this presentation, you expect to hear more of my experience and assessment of the role of the media in the very elections I was a primary player in, than a historical narrative of what transpired in the past under the watch of other persons.

I have therefore, taken liberty to define the topic of my presentation as tightly as possible, suspecting - and I hope correctly - that what you obviously want from me is An Assessment of the Nigerian media in the 2007 General Elections. Even at this tight delimitation of the borders of the subject of my discourse, there will inevitably be references to cases in the past.

The reality remains, of course, that we can not avoid our past. And here - if we take this as the point of entry into my presentation - squarely lies the root of many of our crisis of existence as a nation including the contradictory disposition of the media towards such critical common projects as national elections.

Judging by the experience of the 2007 General Elections, the press in Nigeria is vehement and radically poised in its insistence for good, free and fair elections.

Editorials, analyses, commentaries and all other offers in virtually all the media organs during the election season espoused these noble aspiration.Perhaps,it could not have been otherwise, considering the pedigree of the contemporary Nigeria media which is steeped in nationalism and resolute agitation for the upliftment of the rights and welfare of the Nigerian.

The history of the political and social evolution of Nigeria cannot be written without due tribute to the media for its nationalistic activities. Indeed, it can be said of Nigeria that most of its major leaps and advancement at various critical junctures in its history could not have occurred or at best would have been delayed, were it not for the resolute and catalytic role of the press in pushing forward the frontiers of the rights and opportunities available to the citizens.

This very nationalistic and activist flavour is still very much a part and parcel of the media in contemporary Nigeria. But contradictions and worrisome corrosive tendencies have steadily crept into the media in its treatment of such critical national issue asthe 2007 elections.

The media, for instance, profusely canvassed for excellent, free and fair elections. There was a surfeit of pontifications on free and fair elections.Fine.But the same media did not pay expected and appropriate attention to the type of foundation from which it expected the desired excellent free and fair elections to emerge.

It would have been expected that the media will partner with the Electoral Commission not just in prescribing standards and desired codes of conduct, but also in ensuring compliance to the rules. That did not quite happen.

The press wittingly or unwittingly promoted attention to personalities during the electoral campaign to the detriment of ideas and the insistence on pre-eminence of the law over consideration of status and means. It is a fact that the media in Nigeria is largely privately owned today and operates within a free enterprise setting.

There is no doubt that the society is better for it. But free enterprise and its attendant constant struggle for survival does take is toll. It does indeed, aggravate the contradiction in what is desired or said and what is actually done.

When, institutions with abiding social and moral obligations as the media freely and easily accept unrestrained patronage from individuals and entities that have deeply ingrained contempt for the rule of the game and who are out to buy up the society and subvert sensitive processes such as the electoral process, the expectation by the same media that elections will still be free and fair in the face of such assault becomes very unrealistic. Such was the experience in the 2007 elections.

As part of the effort to create a level playing field and the desired ground for free and fair electoral contests, the Independent National Electoral Commission strived and succeeded in getting the Electoral Act 2006 to set a limit to the amount of money any and every candidate should spend in campaigns and elections.

The media knew there was a ceiling in campaign expenses. What did the media do? What level of collective and individual assistance was extended from its fold to the Electoral Commission, to achieve the necessary condition for fair and free elections? The outcome of every election reflects the very environment and prevailing dispositions in which the election was conducted.

Our stance at the Commission that the conduct and outcome of the 2007 elections could not have been any different or better than what obtained is often misrepresented by those who know the truth but are determined to distort it.

The environment in which the 2007 General Elections were conducted was not the best any democratic election could have been conducted in. The Commission consistently called attention to the prevailing adverse environment in which the elections were to be conducted. It harped on the corrosive influence of money in Nigeria’s politics and the willful abuse of power and all rules by individuals elected to public offices. Some of these individuals could easily buy off a state and its voters if they found it necessary.

Others had such heavy war chest that they could afford to buy off every available civil society group, every willing media organ and every consenting pressure group within sight. And yet the media did not ask the questions begging to be asked. Where did the money come from? Does such expenditure align with free and fair electoral contest? Is the very concept of democracy not founded on a social contract that prevents one individual’s pursuit of self-interest from harming the rights and interests of others?

The nation is being manipulated by political technologists who are using massive propaganda to substitute political representation of values, interests, and ideas that is at the heart of liberal democracy with the media representation of the views and interests of a few individuals obsessed with the acquisition of money and power as vanguards of a nonexistent political reality that is the core of the managed democracy of the past.

The Commission severally made the point also that the political parties as they exist in the society today can only bequeath grief to the political process.

The parties lacked internal democracy, transparency and clear guiding principles. The leadership of many of them simply saw themselves as the parties and had no regard for both their fellow party men and the laws they themselves made.

Amazingly, even as the media recognized the existence of these problems and intermittently commented on them, it did not make an issue of tackling such serious shortcomings with any commitment and characteristic vigor. The direct result of this neglect as far as the 2007 General Election was concerned is that many things happened which ought not to have happened.

Democratic values and culture take root within a society only when egalitarianism is enthroned and jealously guarded in such a way that no citizen, no matter how rich, is allowed to subvert the will of others. A profound analysis of the role of the media in the 2007 election shows that while the media sought for and preached the enthronement of wholesome values in the electoral process, it unwittingly celebrated individuals and conducts that undermined the very noble values it was preaching.

There was hardly any candidate for prime office in the elections whose past and antecedent were investigated and made an issue by the media as a part of the necessary process of leadership as is the case in many other lands.

The 2007 General Elections were, in more ways than one, exceptionally crucial in the evolution of democratic governance in Nigeria. The Commission realized this early in its preparations for the elections and so it was determined to meet the challenges of the exercise. For one, Nigeria had never managed to transit from one democratically elected government to another.

At every such juncture as the country was in the period before the elections in 2007, reasons were created by certain forces for the advancement of democracy to be truncated. As the tenure of the incumbent government neared its terminal point and preparations for the 2007 elections got to a critical point, it was very glaring that the forces which forestalled the progress of democracy in the past were once more at work.

For varied self-serving reasons and calculations different forces which did not want the 2007 election to hold were activated. Some were out to do anything that will encourage the military to return to power, even if such regimes are no longer fashionable across the world. Some desperately wanted the government whose tenure was expiring to stay put, so that they too would have their place in government renewed.

Yet others wanted the elections to be postponed so that May 29, 2007 would pass and a constitutional crisis would arise, such that will lead to an interim government in which by their calculation they would benefit.

That the media missed the real undercurrent of the high temperature of the period leading to the 2007 elections is most amazing. Worst still, there seems to be a refusal by the media to appropriately apportion the blames to the entities responsible for the hitches profusely identified in the polls. For instance, every Nigerian, more so the media followed the unnecessary bottleneck created for the Commission at very crucial point in the preparation for the election by the agency at the Ministry of Finance charged with ensuring due process in procurement.

The delay caused by the agency’s strange and distractive activities impacted adversely on the pace of the Commission in meeting its set deadline for the procurement of needed electoral materials.

While that awkward entanglement prevailed, some sections of the media seemed more interested in fanning the embers of the incapacitating but instructive dispute than in calling attention to the cost of the delays. In the post election discussions in the media of the things that adversely impacted on delivery of materials for the elections, there is yet no appropriate attention to the role that distraction caused by the supposed pursuit of due process played. Or was the situation normal? The Commission which insisted and succeeded against odds to conduct the elections is being strenuously painted by individuals who have axe to grind as being the villain rather than the hero.

The Commission could easily have justified postponing the 2007 elections when they were conducted. There would have been excuses to do that. Would that have made the Commission a better, more patriotic entity? Certainly not. The import of any such decision would have been a constitutional crisis or at best exposure to further charge that the Commission was a party to some third or fourth term conspiracy? Interestingly, the very forces that are railing against the conduct of the 2007 elections today and saying that it would have been better if the polls were postponed would have been at the vanguard pillorying the Commission for any such act of indiscretion. But what about the media?

How profound has been its reading and analysis of the conditions surrounding the conduct of the elections? Should the media flow with well choreographed and sponsored elite angst made over as popular sentiment? Could the conduct and outcome of the 2007 elections be terrible at the same time as many of the leading critics of the polls are hailing their respective governors and representatives elected at those very elections? Let us to ourselves be true.

The antecedent of the press in Nigeria which is steeped in nationalism and self-consciousness firmly places it in the position where its definition and appreciation of the needs and aspirations of the society cannot be externally prompted. Nationalist background aside, the professional standard and sophistication of the press in Nigeria is remarkably high. In terms of exposure and multi-disciplinary training, the present day press in Nigeria can arguably compete with any other press, even in the developed societies.

It is surprising therefore, that even in such critical national issues as the general election, the Nigerian media allows itself in recent times to draw its cue from contentious and at times unfounded views of foreign interests and organizations.

The relish which many press outlets in the country quoted and bought the skewed views of foreign political interests on Nigerian elections is at best, unimaginable. And yet elections of various hues and dimensions are held across Africa every year, including in 2007. In which other countries, including those on the fringe of despotism have the promoters of democracy from abroad who seek subtly to promote internal dissension in Nigeria, assumed such command seat as they do in scoring the standard of the elections? Of course, no nation in the contemporary world, not the least Nigeria, is an island.

When a nation, as reflected by its press, cedes the commanding post in the determination of what is best for it to foreigners, by whatever tag they come, a dangerous seed is being sown, the outcome of which many cannot easily foresee.

The matrix of the Nigerian society and the challenges of overcoming low political and social development create very peculiar settings, the nuances of which the citizen is best positioned to appreciate.

The press, gauged by its attitude to the 2007 elections vis-à-vis the views of foreign groups, tend to forget this point. It should not. Let me at this point borrow an apt and professionally informed view of the American communication scholar Dan Berkowitz in the book Social Meaning of News. According to the scholar, “The study of news is much like viewing a hologram. A person can get closer or farther away. a person can stand in different places. Each new perspective will reveal a different aspect of the same holographic picture. There is no way, though that a person can find a single vantage point where the entire hologram can be viewed all at once.”

The most confounding aspect of the assessment and analyses in the media about the 2007 General Election both before and after the polls is the consistent refusal by many to place the entire process in context. It is simplistic to dismiss the conduct of the elections as falling below some expectations.

What is the context in which the elections were conducted? In the model societies of our collective aspiration, where elections are of high standard, what is the general environment in which elections are conducted? Is it the same standard of environment and general disposition by both contestants and the larger electorate to what obtain in our society? Let us to ourselves be true. Activism without candour only translates to escape. It hardly addresses the core foundation of problems.

In assessing the role of the media in the 2007 election, the impression cannot be avoided that the Nigerian media remains its vibrant and patriotic self. It has however, allowed itself to be hoodwinked and taken in by elements and forces that wave the flag of populism and radicalism, even as they resolutely pursue selfish political agenda.

The fact that the media hardly questions the democratic credentials and antecedent of any one who runs to it as a new ally in democratic activism is without doubt, a problem.

The media attention and treatment of the 2007 General Elections have sometimes tended, for reasons that are not quite clear to sacrifice depth and profundity on the altar of simplistic populism. Unfortunately, any attempt to call attention to this costly situation only attracts reprisals and sharp criticisms.

Take the prevailing activities of election tribunals for instance. Election Tribunals are part and parcel of the electoral process.

The mechanism for adjudicating in election disputes, which the tribunals offer was designed to smoothen contentious edges in elections. There are provisions for appeal in the election tribunal set-ups.

But what do we find in media reporting of the tribunal cases? A ruling is given and even as appeals are immediately entered, the media allows political interest groups and spinmeister to misinterpret the case as over. On the basis of few of such rulings, the Electoral Commission and its leadership have been pummeled to no end on the pages of newspapers and paid TV talk-shows. What is worse? Over 90 percent of the Election Tribunal verdicts have affirmed the result of the elections.

But what do we find in the press? Three or four of the cases where election results were upturned at the first ruling of the tribunals have been so grossly promoted to seem as all the election results have been upturned by the tribunals.

Much more grievous and disappointing is the fact that the very reasons for which the few election results were upturned are wittingly ignored. The whole disposition of a section of the media towards the issue reflects bias and an uncharacteristic disdain for substance. Is it professionally and morally justifiable that after an Election Tribunal has clearly ruled that an election result is upturned because a political party did a shoddy job of what should be an internal administrative job, the Electoral Commission is being pilloried and castigated for the failure of the party while those affected are completely ignored?

A section of the media has allowed partisan interests and their hired hands a very unhealthy level of control in what should be a jealously guarded and fairly allotted space for discussing our common affairs. The situation has adversely influenced the media’s objective profile and performance at a most crucial juncture in our national life. Then there is the issue of reform of the electoral process, a chorus on virtually every lip these days.

The executive arm of government has taken the lead along this desired path by establishing a committee on electoral reform. As crucial as this issue is, there is yet no serious attention to it in form of profound recommendation on what needs to be done.

Once more, a crucial issue in our national life is being subjected to less than serious attention. The media needs to take a lead in coordinating and articulating serious discussions and recommendations on desired reforms for Nigeria’s electoral process.

This is an opportunity to plan for the future. Government has clearly shown the lead and it is up to the public and the media to engage and facilitate that process.

The resort to personalizing issues and distorting facts to meet the vendetta agenda of few individuals and groups who believe an election did not favour them cannot be an expression of reform mindedness, no matter how it is defined. So much personal attack has been hurled on the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission by opinion writers hired and marshaled across newspapers for the sole purpose of pillorying one man as if that is the solution to Nigeria’s electoral problems.

Is it not a surprising that an electoral system that is designed to be largely decentralized in operations and authority is construed as being the sole responsibility of one person. And yet no single individual within the Commission or indeed, the Commission as an entity is responsible for the consistent mess the political class has made of elections and the electoral process.

By allowing the same people who undermine the electoral process to walk away and appear like victims instead of the culprits in the underdevelopment of the electoral process, the media is shirking a cardinal responsibility to the society.

There is also another danger in this strategy of keeping the society trapped in retrospection that our electoral reforms can be distracted into looking only in a rear vision mirror for past mistakes and not have enough attention to planning for future elections.

Have I, by any means given the impression in this presentation that the media has lost its thrust and verve in its historically established pride of place in the political and social development of our fatherland? I hope not. The media remains for now and for all times - from many indications - a prime force and an unmatched bastion of hope for majority of ordinary Nigerian citizens in the face of the graceless and mindless assault by men and women of means and power who seem to perennially see their fellow compatriot as nothing more as means to power and more accumulation of unneeded wealth. But the media needs to be more alert to the wily ways and costly embrace of many in the political arena.

It needs to be more profound in its interpretation of issues. Yes, the 2007 General Election could have gained standard in a better environment for the conduct of the polls.

The standard of elections and their outcome cannot however be separated from the context in which they were held. That is the point the media needs to make but it has not done so, may be because it is politically correct to do so at the moment.

But I trust in the resilience of the Nigerian media. I look at the rich history of the Nigeria media in the making of Nigeria and I have no doubt that sooner than later, the media will be back in leading Nigerians to see the big picture.

INEC will need to partner with the Nigerian media to present to the public details of the continuous voter registration programme, which the Commission plans to begin on January 8th 2008.

This will mark a sharp departure from the previous method of cueing up in lines to register to vote and practice in the past of hurriedly preparing the register.

We shall also soon formally announce another initiative, the Delimitation Action Plan, which will provide a technical platform for the more equitable delineation of electoral constituencies in the country. The present districting of the country into 109 Senatorial districts, 360 Federal Constituencies and 990 State Constituencies was carried 12 years ago by the defunct National Electoral Commission. The 1999 Constitution mandates the Commission to undertake periodic review of the division of State and Federal Constituencies at intervals of not less than ten years or after a census.

The delimitation exercise will provide the nation the opportunity not only to correct some of the errors in the present division but also to establish a technical platform to address the sensitive issue of minority representation. Now that we have overcome the jinx of transiting from one democratically elected government to another, the prospect for democracy in Nigeria is bright and assured.

The media has a duty not to allow anyone to use it to say otherwise. The 2007 General Elections may have had its share of lapses, but those elections have placed Nigeria in a pedestal from which it can only climb higher. As has always been the case, the media has a prime role to play in this prospect. It can only do better.

Thank you.

By Rose Oriaran