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Obasanjo's government and apologists should respect CNN and Freedom of the press in Nigeria

By Nkem Ekeopara

EXCLUSIVE Commentary for
USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
USAfricaonline.com and NigeriaCentral.com

Let's look back. to Nigeria's recent history to understand the latest diversion. Recall Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka appearance on CNN's 'Question and Answer' program, just a few days before Obasanjo was formally selected/arranged into office in Nigeria, in May 1999, through what the CNN correspondent in Nigeria at the time, Jim Clancy, possibly cowed by protests such as mine, poignantly called 'Ballot Box Stuffing.' I had protested later and deplored CNN's laundering of Obasanjo's image and literally helping in imposing the former military dictator on the peoples of Nigeria. Suddenly, reporting facts have become a problem for Obasanjo, his apologists and misguided apologists. Indeed one recalls with deep sadness the fact that they apparently announced the result of the presidential election before the contest took place.

CNN, like most the western media peddled and blew out of proportion Obasanjo's 'handing over' to Shagari in 1979, touting him as the only military dictator that ever did that in Africa.

While the CNN and Western media outlets were used for this unprecedented PR blitz for Obasanjo's interests, neither he nor his canvassers protested the boost. First, Murtala-Obasanjo regime usurped power with one justification - to return Nigeria to a democratic rule after Gowon had reneged his pledge in this direction in 1975.

The favoured North wanted that to happen. It would have amounted to suicide for Obasanjo, never a solders' soldier, to act to the contrary even with as we later learnt, President Carter who was the US president at the time, was prepared to back him in every way, if he elected to toe the path of metamorphosing into another monstrous Mobutu for their interests. This carefully crafted hype didn't configure into the Obasanjo image laundering campaign the presidential election controversy (which Obasanjo acted in favor of Alhaji Shehu Shagari) for which Obasanjo is still seen as a traitor by his Yoruba kinsmen.

Any wonder, he even lost his own party's ward election to the AD. Increasingly, the international community is seeing the fact after their may 1999 pro-Obasanjo hype that he, Obasanjo, lacked the demands of a modern society, requisite intellectual preparation, temperament and refinement to lead a democratic government in an environment as complex as Nigeria.

While Obasanjo's Information minister, Jerry Gana, a geography Professor, but better known as a having served all the post-1983 military dictatorships in Nigeria, commended CNN during 1999, he has reportedly asked that CNN's Jeff Koinange be removed from the country.

I am equally informed that the CNN refused to follow the laughable blitz in which Obasanjo was to be presented and "packaged" (as has been done in the local Nigeria media, repeatedly) by Abati, and other self-declared Obasanjo apologists as a "Nelson Mandela" (!) &endash; wonders will never end with our former military dictator Obasanjo. Beyond their funny spin, please recall that South Africa's Nelson Mandela is the moral and living legend of our time, walking from prison to president, with principles intact and a great vision which neither discriminated and favored his own ethnic interests. What a terrible insult one had to bear in those days to rerad the Obasanjo-Mandela comparison! The groups and persons in Nigeria are dangerously and perniciously arrayed against the CNN correspondent in Nigeria, Koinange and the rights to Freedom of Speech as enshrined in the UN charter and in Nigeria's constitution.

It is sad that Abati in his piece, titled "No to military rule" (The Guardian, February 8, 2002), will sacrifice whatever pretensions and claims he has to being a journalist for his laughable, unrelenting and lengthy water-carrying for Obasanjo's government unleash without any sense of decorum and objective reasoning, and descend in an infantile outburst on CNN's Koinange with outright personal attacks. He described Jeff Koinange as "a perfect example of the international correspondent as a parachutist." By this tag, Abati who is suppose to know in one fell swoop puts to disrepute the impeccable track record and remarkable contributions of international correspondents, particularly those at CNN, in bringing to the international audience of atrocities being committed by power hungry monsters, whether in Odi in the Niger Delta of Nigeria or Kosovo in Yugoslavia.

The assault on CNN issue reflects the Abati line of unreasoned opposition to any reasoned disagreement with Obasanjo. Worse, Abati has used the letters page of The Guardian to attack a columnist for The Guardian, and the Ibrus continue to look the other way. Only a few days ago, I believe on February 13, 2002 on the letters page of the newspaper, a "letter to the editor" from someone from Obasanjo's hometown of Abeokuta, Ogun State (near Abati's own home) wrote a blatant physical and spiritual threats loaded with other ethnic rubbish against Levi Obijiofor, a Guardian contributor/columnist based in Australia. Instructively, Obijiofor has been taken to task recently by some Obasanjo 'plants' in The Guardian newspaper establishment for being too critical of the uncouth and unpresidential posturing and lack of credible performance of president Obasanjo, especially, on education, economic welfare, safety, power supply, ethnic relations, and matters of security.

Perhaps, Abati needs to read his litany of lies, limited knowledge of Nigeria's basic history, sheer falsehoods, documented facts of his instinctive anti-Igbo bigotry and misleading use events to fan hatreds. Incidentally, while Abati strives to demolish, with futility, Koinange's credibility, the term "mercenary" journalist has also been used by reputable Nigerian commentators like Banjo Arowoloju to describe Abati and his bigotry poorly-if-ever-researched assaults on those who merely diagree with Obasanjo on the Nigerian affairs.

Another issue we must note in the CNN distraction foisted by the Obasanjo group is that from Soyinka to Obijiofor and Abati (while the army ruled), many have written worse things than mere interviews where Nigerians spoke on CNN. Nigerians have cast their country in the recent in the worst light than most reporters. And then there are CNN bashers who are self-serving politicians in different garbs.

They will go to any length, including instigating mob action and jungle justice against the 'offending' CNN correspondent. In Nigeria, such things are quite normal in the power play that goes on their daily to protect every interest, but that of the traumatised and impoverished populace. But, I am worried by the lead that Abati and Ibru-owned The Guardian newspaper have taken on this issue.

I am worried that people who should know are unconsciously or otherwise helping to truncate a known and accepted freedom, the freedom of speech. Agreed such a freedom must necessarily be exercised with caution and responsibility. But those attempting to bring the correspondent and its employers, CNN, to disrepute have nothing in terms of hard and verifiable facts to prove to any objective person that Nigeria at the moment is not showing every symptom of a failing State, if not a failed State. They have nothing in terms of Nigeria's past to show that history will not repeat itself, especially with Obasanjo's 'unlawful and unconstitutional' tampering/doctoring of the 2001 Electoral Law as passed by the legislature of Nigeria.

Why is that some of these folks are quick to defend the indefensible? I know, first hand, the brutalities of military rule. Like Jeff Koinange, I'm opposed to military rule. But he has the right to report what the people he interviewed are saying. This CNN issue raises the question, again: how many of those in power and corridors of power in Nigeria are really democratically sincere? Are they not either retired military men (like Obasanjo) or their lackeys in the past? The truth is that the CNN correspondent is reading and reporting events as accurately he sees them.

The other sad fact is that since Obasanjo took over almost 10,000 innocent souls have been callously and criminally wasted in less than three years, more than the waste in 15 years of military dictatorship; such cannot make people jump up for this kind of "democracy."

In the final analysis, the issue of CNN's reports in Nigeria is an issue about the freedom of the press. No attempt should be made by the likes of Abati and other Obasanjo apologists to muzzle it.
Ekeopara, until recently an engineer with the State of Kuwait Public Authority to Agriculture Affairs and Fisheries (PAAF), is a contributing writer for USAfrica The Newspaper, USAfricaonline.com and NigeriaCentral.com

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