MY main task here is to deconstruct the relevance of two books written by a partisan journalist. Ike Abonyi’s declaration of himself as a partisan journalist should be curious. The work is a complex and dangerous combination of journalism and public relations, a subject I have been researching for a ground-breaking work: ‘Journalism Isn’t Public Relations’. Ike Abonyi has challenged the central idea of my ‘hypothesis’ as he has now dared to ask public policy and politics experts: what is wrong with being a partisan journalist? He is simplifying a question: why can’t journalists be partisan too in a society that has entrenched a culture of impunity, where only men rule instead of the laws?
That means: we need to pay attention to the message in the books we are about to launch today. When you read the books, you are likely to renew your mind about some people who use some curious sophistry to impose their opinion that journalists are writing and promoting single or one-sided stories in a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society.
At a recent convention of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) a senior intelligence chief who delivered a keynote spoke extensively on “The danger of a one-sided story”. Now a political journalist, (Abonyi) who crossed over to a partisan beat of political management, writing from the beat for the mass media as a partisan journalist may be challenging the allegation of one-sided stories. Who is a partisan journalist? The answer may be blowing in the wind until the book is unveiled for public consumption.
The books at issue:
The Bubbles of Nigeria Democracy: The Musing of a Nigerian Journalist
The 530-page book is a compilation of the reportorial and analytical work of an organic journalist who spent more than 30 years in the newsroom of four different newspapers (Triumph, Kano, Champion, ThisDay and New Telegraph) plus nearly a decade in the corridors of power of political Parties (PDP and Labour Party). It is a rich memoir, a guide for political writers and analysts.
The book has 106 articles capturing different topics depicting the political activities of this republic from 1999 to 2023. These works are mostly drawn from a weekly political column signed as “Political Musing”, published every Thursday on the Back Page of the New Telegraph (newspaper), where the author was pioneer Deputy Managing Director. He has maintained this column since the inception of the newspaper in February 2014. On the founding of the Global Upfront (digital newspaper) in 2019, the column has also been published in the online newspaper every Thursday.
By its various topics, the book is a collector’s item, topic by topic of critical events in our polity in this republic. But it is undoubtedly a focused column that has its own ideological leaning. In the book, you will find out that there was a delegate from Cameroun in President Jonathan’s 2014 Conference from an article titled: “The confab’s Cameroun delegate”. You will also find interesting articles such as “Aisha’s rebellion and Buhari’s presidency”. Did Aisha Buhari, a former First Lady actually rebel inside Aso Villa’s fortress? Find out in the book too “When the other room was locked”. You will also find out an interesting piece on how “Almajiri puts northern leaders in the dock”. There more interesting topics of contemporary relevance.
Wadata Wonders: Memoirs of A Partisan Journalist
The second book, whose name is derived from the name of the building housing the Headquarters of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, is a 168-page work that mirrors the few years the author spent at the Headquarters of PDP serving as media Adviser to two the National Chairmen, Dr. Okwesilieze Nwodo and Prince Uche Secondus.
The author, as a journalist in this book, has put down some of his experiences mingling with politicians at a very high level in party management. According to the author, it is a story told by “a journalist inside the umbrella as it rains with the actors and actresses”.
The PDP has been rolling in and out of crisis even during their 16 years in power but it got worse when they lost power to the then-opposition APC in 2015. And the party is still smarting from its crisis of coherence. The book, in 29 short readable chapters, captured all the dimensions of PDP up to date.
The author feels from his journalistic perspective that what he saw politicians do in the PDP, especially in nearly four years of Prince Uche Secondus, easily the longest stable regime in the PDP life, is nothing but wonders to the ordinary eyes. You will see this from interesting titles such as “From the Ashes”, through “Prayer, As A Weapon of Political War”, “Like Nwodo, Like Secondus”, “Wike: Tinubu Emerges PDP Highest Bidder”.”Wike, A TseTse Fly on PDP’s Scrotum” to “Will PDP NEC Mend Limping Fractures?”
If you want to become an emergency oracle on what will happen to the PDP, now in the eye of a storm, buy a copy of the book and read. If you want to know the origin of Wike’s involvement in the rise and rise and tumbling of the fist ruling party in this dispensation, get a copy of the book and read. Let me whet your appetite with these excerpts on Chapter 24 of Wadata Wonders…
The article titled: ‘Wike: Tinubu emerges PDP’s Hghest Bidder’.
Who owns the People’s Democratic Party? Is it the people as the name implies? Today, there are two PDPs, one belonging to Nyesom Wike and working closely with the ruling APC, and another led by flag bearer Atiku Abubakar. None of them can stand strong as a credible opposition party. How and why did the party get to this crossroads? A one-word answer is GREED. The party’s leaders saw sugar and jumped at the Greek gift, engaging their faculties in the reverse gear…. They did not care a hoot about the after-effects of the sugar or is wheeler-dealer source until it had entered their bloodstream…’
The full piece reveals how the rain began to beat the PDP now riding a terrible storm. Buy a copy the book to read the effects of the gift that is making a way for one of the ‘owners’ of PDP the author identified in the article on page 114 of the book.
The rider in the second title, Memoirs of A Partisan Journalist excites me as a journalist. And here is why: In Nigeria, all of us in the media have been dragged into a single ‘box office’ by long years over-centralisation of political activities and media ecosystem. What do we do in the box? We are told about the expediency of balancing stories. We have been wired to respect ‘fairness doctrine’ in addition to respecting a rule that is cast on a marble that, “facts are sacred…”.
And here is the thing, any time we do a story about the North and the South, any time we report on the ruling and the opposition parties in any dispensation, we are bound by professionalism to be ‘fair’ to all the parties, even if both parties evade the truth we are told to be loyal to. In this mode, we are told to avoid use of certain terms while describing certain tribes and people even if your descriptions and epithets are factual. We are told to tell stories of troops in war zones in certain ways even if some criminal entities in command positions in the armed forces are endangering the lives of some officers and troops.
What is more, the gatekeepers, (the editors) have been wired to be conflict-sensitive in national interest, even if the understanding is to protect the enlightened self-interest of the heads of state and political leaders. We are told to ensure that we don’t undermine state security by telling certain truths about state actors even if they are stealing our pubic funds with all their strength. That has been part of dilemma we haven’t resolved.
My analogy above illustrates the relevance of Ike Abonyi’s one-sided stories of a partisan journalist the two books threaten to represent. In the book, Abonyi a political journalist and columnist has demonstrated to us what has been happening in most media ecosystems in the world: there is no neutrality anywhere. In the United States, people of various backgrounds and profiles including university scholars freely join political parties, which are distinctively ideological in orientation. People are either of the Republican Party (conservative) or National Democratic Party (liberal).
In 2013, as Editor of The Guardian, I was invited to be on the entourage of scholars from NIPSS, Kuru, Plateau State who were then on a study tour of United States for the year’s study theme: “Management of Political Parties”. The team led by the then Director General of the Institute, Professor Tijjani Muhammad Bande, hired two professors from George Washington University’s Political Management School as resource persons to one of the sessions for the study in the U.S capital.
The two professors, one female and the other male, introduced themselves as members of the Republican Party and National Democratic Party respectively. In Nigeria, we don’t have respectable political parties that can attract members from various backgrounds. Political Parties here (in Nigeria) that appear to be acting as just special purpose vehicles (SPVs) don’t shop for members from even the business and professional communities, let alone the universities.
They attract members only from what Franz Fanon calls “the wretched of the earth” sub-sector and from user-friendly professional associations such as National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW). So, the political leaders and their publicists are expecting at all times the balancing acts from the mass media. They don’t remember what they see in the West, specifically in the United States where there is a great deal of diversity in the media ecosystem:
The CNN audience is different from the FOX NEWS’, for instance. The New York Times editorial orientation is different from the Los Angeles Times’ and Washington Post’s, etc. In the United Kingdom, the BBC isn’t re-echoing or competing with the SKY NEWS in covering the old Great Britain. They have their BBC World, covering the world for Britain, while SKY NEWS covers Britain for the world…
Excerpts from the applauded review of Ike Abonyi’s two books: The Bubbles of Nigerian Democracy: The Musing of a Nigerian Journalist, and WADATA WONDERS: Memoirs of a Partisan Journalist by yours sincerely to be continued…
- Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.