Despite Napoleon Bonaparte’s military invincibility in his heyday in France, the media was one of the things that scared him. Napoleon loved to work with journalists to achieve goals.
Ian Vansina, an authority in oral history, said “a retentive memory is weaker than the palest ink.” So, Napoleon discerned the power that lies on the tip of the nib flowing with ink. The axiomatic expression, “the pen is mightier than the sword,” found expression throughout his regime and has since guided leaders who reason.
All over the world, the media and media practitioners are revered for several reasons. In societies where people crave genuine development anchored on education, information (enlightenment), entertainment and other core functions of the fourth estate of the realm, journalists are given their pride of place, regardless of the form of government.
Because journalists represent the people and see what those in power may not see, they are often consulted by stakeholders to help chart a course to make the society better.
The media cannot be ignored and leaders who, out of mischief or ignorance, ignore the media or try to undermine the practitioners end up hurting themselves instead.
On October 22, national newspapers were awash with reports from Kano that Senator Olugbenga Onaolapo undermined the integrity of journalists by ordering their search for his missing smartphone.
Onaolapo is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Privatisation. He and his committee members were in Kano for an oversight function at the headquarters of the Kano Electrical Distribution Company (KEDCO) located on Post Office Road.
The journalists and other members of Onaolapo’s entourage had gathered at the conference hall but the journalists were asked to move out till after a presentation by the management to the lawmakers.
After the presentation, the journalists were asked to come back in for an interactive session with Onaolapo. But hardly had the interaction with about 30 journalists got off the ground than he raised the alarm that his cell phone was missing.
KEDCO Principal Manager of Corporate Communications, Muntari Usman, acting on the directive of his boss, seized the microphone and announced: “Gentlemen, we don’t intend to embarrass any of you, but I am sorry, you will have to submit yourselves for search over senator’s missing phone.”
Vanguard reported on October 23 that “Heavily armed policemen were subsequently drafted inside the conference hall for the search operations on the hapless journalists.
“A hefty combat ready police officer who conducted the operation spelt out the rule of the game as he hoarded the reporters on one side of the conference hall and was ready to pick one after another before a message from outside the hall announced the discovery of the missing handset.”
Another newspaper reported that “while journalists present were searched, staff of the company and some members of the senator’s entourage were seen moving out of the hall unsearched, an action that the journalists saw as a calculated attempt to embarrass them.
“At the peak of the embarrassing situation came an announcement that the phone had been found by the senator. At this point, the management was embarrassed ….
“Usman apologised to the journalists on behalf of the company for the embarrassment,” adding that, “journalists were partners in progress.”
Usman appealed for understanding, explaining that the search “was not meant to humiliate members of the pen profession.”
The Chairman of Correspondents Chapel of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Kano, Francis Olofu, described the incident as “totally demeaning, provocative and uncalled for.” He was right.
After reading the story in print, which also had strong showing online, I told myself that this is one insult too many for journalists that should not fizzle out without the authorities paying attention to it.
I have checked the newspapers for an apology from Onaolapo, at whose instance the image of the reporters was smeared and their dignity and respect tarred with red mud in Kano, without finding any. It is imperative to ask him to do so.
Often, Nigerian journalists are maligned and assaulted in the course of discharging their duties by all manner of people. The good, the bad and the ugly; the literate and the illiterate; who are privileged to have reporters come round to report their views, arrogate the status of God to themselves.
Going by the Kano saga, it is no more convenient to refer to journalists as “common or bloody reporters” as some people describe them, but now as “common thieves” if they could be isolated in a hall in public glare and frisked over the “missing” cell phone of a senator.
Some of the journalists searched for Onaolapo’s “missing” phone probably had better and more expensive phones than his and those of the KEDCO management staff who thought they had found armed robbers in journalists who came to report an event involving a senator whose activity had little impact on citizens.
Since Onaolapo and his hosts locked themselves inside and asked the journalists to excuse them as usual, is it unlikely the phone thieves would have been part of the clandestine meeting?
The apology from the KEDCO management came from the wrong quarters. Onaolapo should be the one to apologise to journalists since he started it all and since he was instrumental to the invitation of policemen by KEDCO officials to search innocent reporters covering their beat honourably.
I discovered on the internet that Onaolapo has a National Certificate in Education (NCE) and Bachelor of Education (B.Ed). Some of those journalists he looked down on could have been better educated and more professionally blended than him and the overzealous KEDCO officials.
The NUJ at the national level, the Nigeria Guild of Editors (NGE) as well as the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) should not allow this ugly development to pass by as usual.
The NUJ should seek judicial redress over this insult to its members in Kano.
While that is in progress, Onaolapo and the KEDCO should be denied media coverage, as obliging them further undermines what is left of the damage they have done to the reputation of journalists.
This incident should also serve as lesson to NPAN, NGE and NUJ about the welfare of journalists.
