By Linus Aleke
It was the English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic, George Orwell, who said: “Freedom of the Press if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticise and oppose”. These two irked the Nigerian military the most, especially as it concerned the reportage of the ongoing counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations by the media.
This is even when the media is not probing and interrogating most of the contrasting issues in the ongoing operations. For instance, the escalation of terrorist attacks across the federation in the face of the massive surrendering of terrorist fighters and their families to forces, especially in the North-East theatre of operations, which hitherto was the hotbed of terrorist activities, is a portion of food for thought.
Though, that is no longer the case as migratory terrorists are now wreaking havoc and causing mayhem in the Northwest and the North Central under a new nomenclature, “bandits”. These contradictions are the story for another day as it is not the focus of this piece.
Meanwhile, it does appear that the nation’s military is vigorously opposed to any form of a free press, especially, as it concerns the coverage of the terror war in Nigeria. It hides under all manners of concepts to infringe on the rights of the fourth estate of the realm.
Some of the concepts it dangles, and labours so hard to defend or force down the throat of media professionals are the need not to report certain shortcomings of the military, with phrases such as national security, or national interest.
The military also employs subtle blackmail and intimidation, in a desperate attempt to cage journalists in the cell of its perception of the above concepts. In so doing it brands the press as enemies of state and terrorists’ sympathisers.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and Media Trust Ltd, owners of Trust TV and Daily Trust newspapers, have been marked for bullying, simply because they reported factual events in the country.
The documentary aired by the BBC and Trust TV, as well as the report on the killing of soldiers and officers in the Bwari area of Abuja by terrorist fighters, were not fictitious, but factual.
The former United States president, Thomas Jefferson had in mind this kind of tendency from constituted authorities when he said, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was and never will be.
The functionaries of every government have the propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe”.
However, the Nigerian military demonstrated its strong aversion to Jefferson’s thesis on free press when the Director, Defence Information (DDI) Major General Jimmy Akpor threw caution to the wind and berated the press for daring to publicise the video of the inhuman treatment of captives of Abuja-Kaduna train attack, as well as the killing of officers and soldiers in Abuja.
He said, “Why the question on the number of soldiers killed and also delving into the tact? What does that have to do with the tact? That the troops dropped their heavy armament to cross a stream. Drop their APC and their gun trucks to cross the stream, and as they cross the stream they come under attack.
“Of what use is that information to a journalist? That is not what you are supposed to concern yourself with, tactics. You want to paint it as a wrong practice to the public. If it were a tactical flaw, do you have a solution to the supposed flaw? No, you don’t,”
He continued the tirade on the Defence Correspondents. “So, when we see these calls and chats coming from journalists, we begin to wonder. Interrogate what you seek first. When you interrogate your questions sometimes, you discover that what you seek most times are unnecessary. Publicising how these terrorists threaten the soul of this country, is not the best. What are you doing to the psyche of Nigerians?
“By giving that much publicity to the video that came from terrorists. You have sent everybody into a panic mood with that attitude. Because everybody wants to publish and have published, what have you done? You have made the whole of the society look helpless”.
Akpor said the death of the soldiers was a testimony that the military was working round the clock to make the country safe for us while insisting that security is everybody’s business.
“You now know that there are lots of activities everywhere. You now know that the military and other security agencies are not sleeping. The soldiers that got killed in Bwari were not going for a party.
“They were there for more than two weeks based on information to deal with the situation. They were not going for merrymaking; security is everybody’s business. It is not enough to say that the terrorists are around the hills in Abuja, that is not information, and it was because they were trying to seek and find these terrorists that they entered ambush.
“So, you have a duty, the very sacred duty that we don’t have in any other country apart from this. We must all contribute and not make everywhere look like we are hopeless.
We all depend on hope, the moment we all sleep into despondency, it is all over for us. So, you have to hold on to that hope, to preach that hope, by the way, you go about your reportage.”
On the allegation of soldiers collecting part of the ransom kidnapped victims are paying to bandits, the DDI made the following clarifications, “We have no information about the allegation that troops were involved in collections of ransom.
“As I said, we don’t have that information, but you do know that the Armed Forces of Nigeria (AFN), is a very well-structured organisation that will never tolerate any form of misdemeanour from its personnel.
“There are court Marshals all over the divisions that deal with all these administrative issues. So, if the report gets to the appropriate authorities, it will be investigated, and you can be sure that appropriate measures will be taken to deal with any misdemeanour,” he said.
Giving more bite to the views of Maj-Gen. Akpor on the need to give blind eyes and deaf ears to casualties on the side of the military and other state forces, the Director, Defence Media Operations, Major General Benard Onyeuko queried: “Are you more interested in the number of soldiers killed or our effort to ameliorate the situation?”
He continued, “You are duty bound when you get such information to come down to our office, let us see the information before this press briefing so that we can react appropriately. You cannot just come and tell us that a supposed soldier, how are you even sure he is a soldier? Are you sure or do you speak to the soldier directly, I don’t know.
“When you see such things, come to us with the tape, we have people who will do forensic analysis on the voice and all that and we will be able to stand and tell you if it is our soldier or not but now, you are saying a supposed soldier. Even you, you are not sure.”
Answering questions on how safe Abuja and its environs are at present, Maj-Gen. Onyeuko averred, “That is why I am confident to tell everybody that security of lives and properties in FCT is very assured, and our operations are still ongoing.”
On his part, the Director of Public Relations and Information (DOPRI), Nigerian Air Force, Air Commodore Edward Gabkwet supported his colleagues.
He said, “Let me just add my voice to this issue of stories or rumours from a video on social media. The truth is, a forum of this nature should not be a place where we will begin to interrogate rumours, unfounded allegations for that matter.
“We should be discussing how we should all put heads together to find a way to solve some of these problems that we are facing. I don’t expect that you should come up with unfounded stories, or allegations that those behind the voices cannot be confirmed.
“Whether it is being sponsored by the enemy, should not be discussed in this kind of forum. I think we should be discussing more important things.
“We have a country that everybody loves, and we see what is happening to our country, we should be discussing the way forward rather than spend time talking about things that cannot add value to us. One of you earlier said that there had not been information from the military about what happened in Bwari.
“Recall that the spokesperson of the Brigade of Guards spoke to journalists on this matter, and I think he also issued a statement. I don’t think we expect the DMO to still go back to the same issue. Please, let us be snappy about this thing so that we can go and do other things.”
Nevertheless, a media scholar, who does not want his name in print, picked holes in the outburst by the military spokesperson.
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While blaming it on ignorance of the working and dynamic of the media industry, he said most of the spokespersons in the military circle are not trained or prepared for the job of a spokesperson and information management.
“First and foremost, the military needs to understand what news and the criterion for newsworthiness is. It is not just enough to do a few months in Public Relations. Public Relations is just a small segment of journalism.
“What is news? Unusual events are news, hence the popular aphorism in journalism that when a dog bites a man, it is not news, but when a man bites a dog, it becomes news,” because it is odd for a sane man to bite a dog.
“The same thing applies to reporting conflict or war situation, if soldiers kill terrorists, the media is not supposed to glamorise it the way they had done, because the troops were trained to kill terrorists and other criminal elements that may pose a significant threat to the sovereignty of the country. But when ragtag terrorist fighters kill soldiers or officers, it is more newsworthy because they lack the capacity and kind of training and experience that the state forces have.
“Secondly, the media industry is not a public corporation that gets subvention from the government to take care of overhead and what have you. How do you expect a media organization to compromise its professional selling point, under the guise of national security and national interest? What the military is simply asking the media owners is to use their own hands to ground their business.
“Advertorial drives media business and when a media organisation lacks a large readership or viewership, then it is on its way out of business. So, the spokesperson should understudy these dynamics in the media business and advise the hierarchy on the need to find a middle ground, instead of trying to use force to make the media see things with their opaque lens. It is not going to happen.
Maybe the military or Federal Government should find a way of supporting the media organisations within the period of this terror war to enable them, to look at national security with one lens, as well as stay afloat in the business,” he said.
The spokesperson should also understand that there is a difference between Public Relations and Media Relations. “The two must be married to get the desired result,” he further advised.
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It is, however, on the premise of the above that one may conclude with the words of an American elder statesman, Thomas Jefferson, who said if confronted with the choice of “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government”, he will not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
