For daring to contest the presidency of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, Eze Anaba was branded an Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) member. These characters, without qualms, shamelessly called to threaten and abuse fellow editors for going round with an Igbo to campaign in an election they were vying for the same position.
Eze Anaba (right) with the governor of Imo State, Hope Uzodimma, after he was elected President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors
It is no longer news that the just concluded national bi-annual convention of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), which held in Owerri, Imo State capital, produced Eze Anaba, editor of the Vanguard newspaper as the new president.
In the next two years, he and 15 other officers will run the affairs of the elite club of Nigerian editors. It is not going to be an easy task but editors are confident that the Anaba-led team will deliver.
What ought to be a simple task of professionals choosing, in a convivial atmosphere and spirit of camaraderie, those who will authoritatively allocate their collective values for a very short period of 24 months turned out to be an election like no other, with difficulties more fundamental than the normal schism that characterizes every struggle for power. Since the NGE was founded on May 20, 1961, at the old National Press Club in Lagos by Alhaji Lateef Jakande, who also emerged as its first president, the 2023 election was perhaps the most toxic.
To be sure, the NGE is not immune to crisis. Though the Jakande-led executive that included other veterans such as Babatunde Jose (vice president), Abiodun Aloba (secretary) and Nelson Ottah (assistant secretary), had the vision of advancing the interests of the media profession and deepening editors’ relationships with their various publics including the government, the political crises of the 1960s became a clog in the wheel of progress.
The 1966 coups and the 30-month civil war led to the sacrificing of the journalistic principles of objectivity, credibility and accuracy on the altar of war propaganda.
But even in the heady era of the military after the war, Nigerian editors jealously guarded the independence of the media so much so that when General Olusegun Obasanjo’s junta promulgated a Press Council Decree in 1977 to muscle free press, the NGE rejected it outright and also pushed back against civilian governments that wanted to skyjack its leadership.
Thus, at the 1982 convention in Minna, Niger State, when the Alhaji Shehu Shagari-led National Party of Nigeria (NPN) government through Alhaji Umaru Dikko, the Minister of Transportation, tried to take control of the Guild by sponsoring the campaign of Alhaji Ibrahim, the Director General of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), who only became a registered member at that conference, members revolted and thwarted the move.
Such pushbacks were possible because the founding fathers designed an exclusive club of professional news managers where editors as the ultimate gatekeepers on media content could interrogate issues of professionalism. Since then, it has remained true to its calling, working in collaboration with other journalistic bodies across the world to preserve the standards of journalism practice, strict adherence to ethics and advocacy for press freedom and democracy.
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Nigerian editors under the NGE aegis have played their watchdog role conscious of the clear provisions of Chapter 2 Section 22 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), that: “The press, radio, television and other agencies of the mass media shall at all times be free to … uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people.”
How then can the media hold the government accountable if the practitioners become subservient to the government like the supine ninth National Assembly headed by Senator Ahmad Lawan?
Sadly, 62 years after those great journalists founded the NGE, some editors wanted to ride on the back of the asinine 2023 identity politics to win the Guild presidency. They insisted that it would augur well if the NGE was embedded in the presidency, perhaps as a government parastatal rather than the Fourth Estate of the Realm as envisaged by the Constitution. That was a fallacy. And fortunately, Nigerian editors saw through the heresy.
Never in the history of the NGE was ethnicity considered a relevant factor in the election of its leadership. Competence and character always trumped such primordial considerations.
Since its revival in 1992 by Chief Onyema Ugochukwu, the NGE has had Biodun Oduwole, Garba Shehu, Oluremi Oyo, Baba Dantiye, Gbenga Adefaye, Femi Adesina, Garba-deen Muhammad, Funke Egbemode, and Isa Mustapha as presidents. Nobody cared where they came from. What mattered was their track record of achievements.
What changed? Nothing other than the fact that those who profiteered from the ethnic profiling of fellow Nigerians in the 2023 elections thought they could export the same retrogressive template to the Guild. If identity politics worked for them during the general election, why will it fail now, they reasoned. So, rather than selling their policies to fellow editors, they were busy flaunting their closeness to the new kids on Nigeria’s power block.
In running this nefarious and harebrained campaign, they were backed to the hilt by those who made incendiary comments against fellow Nigerians for no crime other than their electoral preferences which did not agree with theirs.
For daring to contest the presidency of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, Eze Anaba was branded an Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) member. These characters, without qualms, shamelessly called to threaten and abuse fellow editors for going around with an Igbo to campaign in an election they were vying for the same position.
Yet, if the expression “true Nigerian” means anything, Eze Anaba embodies that truth. The only thing Igbo about him is his name. Son of late Mr. Josiah Anaba, who hailed from Umuota, Obingwa, Abia State and mother, late Mrs. Rosaline, an Ishan (Esan) from Ubiaja in Edo State, Eze and his siblings were born and raised in Lagos. Over 70 per cent of his friends are non-Igbo, including those who suddenly realized that he is Igbo and, therefore, not qualified to aspire to lead the NGE. His wife, Itoro, one of the most hardworking Nigerian women hails from Akwa Ibom State.
Eze speaks Yoruba better than he speaks Igbo. He has worked and thrived in an organization owned by one of the doyens of journalism in Nigeria today, Uncle Sam Amuka, who is not Igbo. In his capacity as Editor of the high-flying Vanguard newspaper, he manages colleagues from all the nooks and crannies of this vast country without any iota of bigotry.
But why did they try that nonsense? Didn’t they know they were dealing with members of an elite club who know what the real issues were and what was at stake?
Impunity is the answer. It has a way of beclouding people’s senses. But what was at stake was the very soul of the Nigerian Guild of Editors. And when it mattered most, Nigerian editors, just as they did in 1982 in Minna, made a resounding statement in Owerri on June 16 by rejecting tendencies that divide rather than unite us.
At the Rockview Hotel Owerri, venue of the convention, editors who decided even before arriving Imo State that the Guild was better off with an Eze Anaba presidency voted overwhelmingly to ensure that competence and character trumped identity politics.
Money was obscenely deployed in a futile attempt to wheedle the unwary. Ethnic slurs were hauled recklessly but rather than persuade, such underhand, devious tactics dissuaded the highly discerning Nigerian editors, who contended, and rightly so, that the presidency of their Guild was not for sale to the highest bidder.
When the votes were tallied and counted, Eze Anaba polled 250 votes to defeat those who labelled him IPOB. They only managed to garner 81 votes. It was real shellacking.
In repudiating the idiocy of identity politics particularly in a professional body like the Nigerian Guild of Editors, journalists have once again demonstrated to politicians that politics could do with some decency and elections can be transparent, free, fair and credible.
The Maimuna Garba-led election/screening committee that had Isaac Ighure, a Fellow of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, Yusuf Abdulssalam, Mary Atolagbe and Felix Nwadioha as members did a job that INEC Chairman Mahmoud Yakubu proved incapable of doing.
It is not about numbers. It is all about political will to do the right thing and fidelity to the Constitution. Indeed, Nigerians have something to learn from Nigerian Editors who made a loud and unambiguous statement in Owerri on June 16 that their conscience can never be purloined. They also affirmed by their exemplary conduct that free and fair election is possible even in Nigeria.