Hazards So Fatal …Thankless Path Of A Vibrant Press

When on a state visit to Georgia, last year, United States of America (USA), Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton said, a given citizenry is only as informed as its media, she was merely highlighting in as brief a manner as the circumstance allowed, the enormous responsibility of a dutiful press. Without a vibrant press, the people wallow in a measured darkness.

But with such vibrancy comes a price, sometimes too fatal to be considered as mere professional hazard. To have a society that is better informed, educated, entertained, and socially engineered for proactive development, poor soldiers of the press must daily search for the facts in issue necessary for such societal education.

Sometimes, such vital information of great human interest is concealed because of the moral, even criminal desires of some pervert who wills such facts be buried for ever. At other times, it’s free and open, especially when such is for the self-aggrandisement of the information holder.

But because society daily desires answers to questions, both raised and ignored, to be properly abreast with how government runs its business, how public funds are committed, and more importantly, to fore-warn unsuspecting members of the public about potent dangers they are unaware of; the media must not only help raise vital questions, it must also craft such vital facts and disseminate same in a timely fashion for the proper education of the people.

Such duties are not personal to the media or its practitioner. The journalist is merely an instrument necessary to perform such thankless job which very often pitches him against varied influences, whose diabolic pastime may be to seek to hide from public scrutiny such facts or determine how such facts must be presented or misrepresented. Either way, it cannot be for society’s good but theirs.

Sadly, by their training, the journalists are left with a choice, to present the facts as they possibly can, in an objective, balanced, and timely manner, grounded most often on public safety and interest. But in doing this, the journalist inadvertently embarks on a perilous journey which destination, very often, is death, not by natural factors, but through gruesome murder by influential figures whose egoes might have been bruised by such expose and at other times, by morally depraved, red-eyed and criminally-minded social misfits, to whom human life is like a deflated football that can be thrown away at will.

Such was the end that befell victims of mindless bombings of three media houses: ThisDay, Sun and Moment in Abuja and Kaduna simultaneously by faceless killers to whom the critical media had been bug. And without any known provocation other than carrying out their constitutionally allowed duties, the three media houses became terror targets. In the aftermath, as many as eight people died and some 19 others injured, most of them, critically.

Shamelessly, when the dust raised by the explosions and concomitant deaths settled, a visionless Islamist sect named Boko Haram, accepted responsibility, and gave reasons which could go as shameful cacophony coughed by a mentally deranged saddist. Just because it could.

One such excuse was that the three papers had not only been too critical of Boko Haram activities, they failed to champion the vision and objectives of their war against the Nigerian state and government. And that the bombings were meant to teach the papers a bitter lesson, and that way also warn all other media houses against being unduly critical of their activities. What a shame!

Since the killing, by a letter bomb, in 1986, of the founding Editor-In-Chief of the Newswatch Magazine, Dele Giwa, last Thursday’s terror attacks were the first on the media by the Boko Haram sect – a group of ill-informed and criminally minded Islamic extremists whose only known pastime has been bloodletting, mass murders and human destruction in the name of fighting Western education and clandestine move to impose Islam not only on a section of the country, but if possible, the whole nation.

By these attacks, Boko Haram believed that it would silence the media or wipe them into line – a line which end is destruction.

If that was the intention, it failed, because the triumph of evil over good is only but temporary.

Rather than instill fear, the attacks have further strengthened the media practitioners and boosted in them the resolve to condemn everything that seeks to replace love with hate, hope with fear, and life with death of unprovoked kind. And at peace time.

This is why Nigerians must be united behind the Federal Government in fighting this war waged by a few who seek to destroy the bonds that unite us, even in our diversity and variance of our tongues and tribes. The citizenry must be more alert to security breaches where ever they live and must report suspicious characters to the nearest police station.

Happily, the State Security Service (SSS) has assured that some of the suspected culprits behind the bombings have since been arrested and that, it hopes meaningful information could be accessed towards unraveling the principal actors of that dastardly act. The SSS needs to do better than that.

They must articulate better operational tactics that is preventive in nature, through improved intelligence gathering. No where is the war against terrorists easy because of their faceless nature as distinct from a conventional army with known operational units. In this case, the next door neighbour could be the enemy, which is why vigilance, better intelligence gathering and decisive punishment for apprehended culprits, are key.

The Federal Government must realise the enormity of the dangers we face and step-up the search and punishment of the enemies before many more are coerced into enlisting with their ranks. Just for the money.

It is indeed a big shame that a once happy but poor people could now be turned against themselves for reasons many are yet to comprehend, other than that Western education is a sin, and should therefore, be discontinued. Yes, the media, as one of its roles, also educate but are not schools. So, what’s the point?

The attacks merely amplify the unfortunate absurdity of the Boko Haram’s agenda and the futility of its drive. However, if the group has any other issue that deserves consideration by normal mortals, and not fellow mentally deranged lot, it must step forward and present such issues for dialogue. Until and unless that is done, members of the group should be treated as enemy combatants whose lone desire is blood. Therefore, the rules of engagement must apply. Unless such persons surrender and be treated as Prisoners of War (POW), the federal forces must search for and kill them before getting killed. And that is possible only with the right kind of intelligence backing.

My Agony is that those suicide bombers being killed in their attempts to kill others are mere foot-soldiers.

The right war lies in identifying and apprehending their sponsors and financiers. When shall we get there? Someday, with an even more proactive and courageous media. That begins now.

This is because, the attacks rather than serve as set-backs are, to the media, a wake-up call that the enemy might well be next door. Such is the hazard we face.

Soye Wilson Jamabo

President Jonathan And Mr Nduka Obaigbena