The Guardian Editorial Board’s recent article on President Tinubu’s excruciatingly painful economic reform policies and the call for military intervention and the response by the presidency sent shockwave through the polity. The Guardian is the icon of Nigeria print journalism. Mr. Bayo Onanuga, the spokesman for the presidency is undoubtedly one of the most respected in the journalistic business. Hence, beyond the merits of the argument for or against the journalistic propriety of the Guardian’s article in question, let me sincerely thank Mr. Bayo Onanuga for reminding us all of the lost great tradition of excellence in penmanship, the economy of word, analytical logicism, and the succinctness that once characterized the best of journalism in our country.
Sadly, today that tradition has all but become a rarity. Some of the best in the business now routinely feed us long, unwieldy, incoherent, incomprehensible, emotion-laden, illogical, mumbo jumbo maze of word salad that is a torturous to go through. We are routinely fed with long articles that go on and on with Yoruba folklores, long tales, simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, irony, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and puns that are best left for comedic drama performances than journalism. I have often wondered whether today’s journalists including our brothers in the Tribune are compensated based on their word counts as opposed to the logic and journalistic excellence of their posts. What is mind-numbing, bewildering and frustrating is that both the Tribune and Guardian were once the flagship of excellence in journalism that many of grew up to know. Many of us develop a love for writing, from reading mesmerizingly beautiful prose in the Guardian, and the Tribune. Sadly, the same cannot be said today, of these great journalism icons for inspiring the next generation.
Now to Mr. Bayo Onanuga’s rebuttal to the Guardian article. He is totally on point that the Guardian could have made the points it intended to make in the article, that is the misery and suffering being imposed on the populace by the policies of the Tinubu’s regime without leading with the call for military intervention. Even a first year student in journalism school knows that no part of an article receives more critical attention than the headline. That the headline/title is the most important part that conveys in few attention catching phrase, the intent of the article. The Guardian editorial board knew what it was doing when it chose the headline “Calls for military intervention: misery, harsh policies driving Nigerian military desperate choices”. It was nothing but a tacit acquiescence to the propaganda by a fringe population particularly in the north, who are advocating for military intervention as a way to regain what they perceive as their stolen birthright to rule the country in perpetuity no matter how incompetently and disastrously they have done so for decades.
In the age of social media of X-Twitter, Instagram and the associated information overload, which has shrunk our attention span to nanoseconds, headlines have taken on much more importance than at any time. Most readers now routinely scan through news headlines without reading the body of the article. It is therefore the height of journalistic malpractice for the Guardian to lead with military take-over headline despite its tepid denunciation of military take-over.
Yes, our country is going through arguably the most excruciatingly painful span of economic hardship and suffering in a generation, however, no objective analyst will pin the entire culpability for it on the less than 18 months old regime of President Tinubu. More importantly no rational thinking person, especially anyone who understands that the origin of our national disaster and dysfunction, including the apocalyptic Biafra war in which Nigerians turned deadly weapon against one another, could be traced to the military intervention in our nascent experiment with democratic governance during the first republic.
Yes, our experience with democracy since 1999 has fallen woefully short of our expectations and has in fact left many of us despondent. Nonetheless, it is criminally irresponsible for any journalist, especially from an iconic flagship like the Guardian to even be remotely associated with advocating or justifying military intervention. What is so troubling is that this is not an isolated event. We have witnessed many highly respected journalists including and especially many highly influential Yoruba opinion writers, who have sought to normalize and whitewash the reprehensible, blood curling, ignominious murderous Abacha regime by equating the Tinubu presidency with that regime. We have highly placed Yoruba who have dropped the name of Hitler in the same sentence describing the Tinubu regime. We all must condemn in the strongest term this attempt by influential journalists from the Southwest to normalize evil and justify military intervention.
The worse democratic government is better than the most benevolent military juntas. The antidote to a bad democratic government is not to sell our suffrage for a pot of military porridge, but to seek a change thorough the electoral process. President Tinubu was explicitly upfront with the electorate about what he would do if they gave him the presidency. He told everyone of us that he would remove the criminal fuel subsidy, and float the currency. He also alerted the citizens that his policy prescriptions would impose excruciating pain to the citizens, albeit temporarily, with a promise of a big pay-off at the end of the pain. The president went a step further doing what many political consultants would consider a kiss of death, by telling the people not to vote for him should his reform policies fail to deliver on its promise.
Yet, less than two years to his presidency some irresponsible journalists are already joining the wacko crowd mostly from the north, to slyly advocate for military intervention by speaking from both sides of the mouth.
That is totally unacceptable. It is journalism at its worst form. It must be roundly and unequivocally condemned by everyone.
