Freedom Radio and Social Conspiracy in Kano

Garba Hamisu

Kawaje Kano

First of all Daily Trust must be commended for adhering to the journalistic ethic of contributing to the education of its readers by promoting healthy discourse on its pages. The article by Salman Yunusa in the Daily Trust of June 15 2005 was very educative and provocative in the sense that it said the bitter truth and put those who live on criticism of others on the defensive by defeating them in their own game. It was earlier published in the popular websites www.gamji.com and www.amanaonline.com both owned by northern Muslims. Freedom Radio could not swallow the criticism of Salman Yunusa and correct some of its mistakes instead the management behaved as if they were God sent. They did not have the courage to read Salman's essay for their audience even though they are good in translating reports that maliciously tarnish the image of more important institutions such as that of the Emirate. Salman's essay has indeed brought out the true nature of the station, one should expect more from this desperate organization that is out to make money through blackmail by exploiting the ignorance of its audience. This essay would survey their response to Salman and confirm that the station is involved in social conspiracy which is the attempt to hoodwink the society to a direction inorder to promote the interests of a particular group. The station wants the perpetuation of ignorance and acrimony so that the proprietors and management would continue to make money. It has no commitment to social harmony hence it continues to promote acrimony between opponents to make money because they have to pay to speak. One attacks today the other replies tomorrow and they all pay. It believes in celebrating ignorance so that people can not ask the right questions hence its spirited attack on Salman Yunusa.

Since they lacked the capacity of any intellectual discourse they retorted to social conspiracy of blackmail by attributing the essay to some fictitious people of their imagination. Although there is no need to recap what Salman Yunusa obviously stated it is imperative still that we refresh our memory on the professional pedigree of that radio station. Salman Yunusa rightly noted the integrity of the chairman and also appealed to him to call the workers of the station to order. This is a noble call but what followed clearly revealed the nature of the people at the station. Some observers have even suggested that the chairman has grievance against the state government because he failed to honor General Buhari's instruction to represent him at a Kano State function The people now believe that there has been a conspiracy to instigate General Buhari against the state government since he attended the swearing in of new commissioners in Kano Government House recently a clear testimony that there is nothing between him and the state government contrary to the propaganda of the station. The behavior of one of the chairman's younger brothers is also questionable because of his lack of fair play and integrity. He always instigated the people against Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau whenever they visited the station because he refused to give him juicy appointment.

Freedom is one of the few radio stations or media establishments whose top management are people of limited education although they started as untrained and learnt the business on the job instead of them to be humble they developed inferiority complex and resentment. One of them, the most vocal is so drunken by aggressive chase for position that he dreamt of being appointed the general manager of one of the Kano media establishments and when he lost he began to hate the present Kano State Governor and the state government. The extent of his pettiness is a confirmation of the adage that "little knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance". He was to be honored by an organization along with a senior official of the state government and he left the arena of the award when the representative of that official arrived because out of intolerance he did not want to be honored along with an official of an elected government thus exhibiting his disdain for democracy. The National Broadcasting Commission should take action against this station because of the behavior of that manager when he publicly called for the victory of the PDP during an interview with a stalwart of the party. Since the ANPP is disorganized they could not even protest to the regulatory agency. Was the behavior of that manager professional? Is that the way to promote freedom and democracy?

Although the station is named freedom or the people's voice its management does not believe in the people or even freedom. It can only be people's voice if it identifies with the aspirations of the people. It can only be called freedom if it believes in freedom from harassment. As rightly pointed out by Salman Yunusa the station has more or less nothing for the development of the people of Kano State. Few of its programs have anything to do with educating the public. One of such programs is Birgimar Hankaka by a veteran journalist. That was why it retorted to sentiment by trying to incite the public against Salman Yunusa when one of its vocal presenters castigated him for writing that they are exploiting the ignorance of Kano people. According to the presenter who felt on top of the world "the people of Kano despite their ignorance are the ones who elect and overthrow governments". But does this make ignorance a virtue? Salman Yunusa was only trying to bring out this bitter truth as a challenge for the station to contribute in making its society literate. Instead of causing disharmony through acrimony whereby people waste their valuable time abusing each other for others to make money when they have better things to discuss.

Salman's suggestion that our society is largely illiterate cannot be overlooked. The task before all well meaning people and northern Nigerian Muslims is how to lift their society to greater heights and not the deception of Freedom Radio that since the people make and unmake government their illiteracy should not be a source of concern. They should borrow a leaf from Idris Mohammed Amin of the BBC and come out with strategies of improving education instead of promoting sycophancy and cronies. Although northern Nigeria had a rich culture of Islamic education it is now diminished because of lack of creative synthesis of modern and traditional systems of education. This is an important issue the station should address instead of blackmailing the people who criticize it and promoting acrimony. No administration in history of northern Nigeria has ever made as much determined effort towards this synthesis as the Shekarau Administration whose program of the Almajirai has received the blessing of all the northern states who have promised to adopt it. Similarly it has also made the most profound effort to resuscitate the dilapidated human and physical infrastructure of formal education in the state. The Shekarau administration has also done more than any other administration in this sector it has also recruited more teachers and other staff amounting to over 3000 in less than two years. It has provided teaching aids, vehicles for inspection, more furniture to students (33,000) were provided with seats in the secondary schools and above all raised the morale of teachers by restoring all their benefits. Yet Kano cannot be lifted in four years because of years of neglect since Rimi left government education began to drift and Kwankwaso killed it by sacking all contract workers hence the exam results of the state have been falling since that time. Shekarau administration has restored automatic scholarships to all students of higher institutions, more than 20,000 are now benefiting and budgetary allocations for scholarship is now more than doubled over the previous administration. As part of its commitment to long term human capital development the administration has offered more than 50 PhD students scholarships and assistances an unprecedented number in history since no administration has ever done that. It should be noted that Kano State does not have 200 PhD in all subjects since the arrival of western education. So what does the administration that tries to train more than 50 at time deserves commendation or condemnation? At the higher level Kano State University of Science and Technology is one of the most funded schools in Nigeria receiving more than half of what ABU receives in overhead funds despite the fact that ABU is about ten times its size? These are the issues the radio station should give attention as the Trust group of newspapers have been doing.

Even an enemy of the Shekarau administration knows that sanity has returned to Kano this is because no matter what one would ever claim Shekarau does not have any group of yan daba (brigands) like the previous administration that sponsors them. The hatred of a faction of the elites for the people of Kano led them to be sponsoring these brigands in order to destroy the children of the poor so that their own children would be in perpetual dominance. Freedom Radio does nothing to discourage this malice. It is more concerned with the destruction of the Shekarau administration that tries to engage the youths in skills acquisition and re-orient them towards a purposeful Islamic life. Freedom Radio has no contribution to make in this respect only to connive with foreign organizations to pollute the culture of people hence it went into alliance with one of them to promote obscene music. The station stopped airing one of its client-Imams when he decided to criticize it in his sermon for conniving with foreigners. It is however worth noting that the Wahhabi Imam has since mellowed down and is now happy to be invited to UK as a moderate voice in the Islam-West debate. Apart from Mallam Ibrahim Khalil and Dr. Bashir Aliyu Umar most of the Ulama promoted by the station are half-baked Wahhabis. Sometimes traditional Ulama are invited to be ridiculed by the station in connivance with its Wahhabi allies in a typical BBC style of giving attention to a weak opponent as a pretense to objectivity.

The station has also exhibited its disdain for attitudinal towards a purposeful Islamic life in its virulent attack against A Daidata Sahu when one of its reporters made a false report on the first anniversary commemoration. Is this how to be a responsible station to be against the most comprehensive societal re-orientation program by any state government? The station did not have the courage to give coverage for the launching of A Daidata Sahu by taxi and bus drivers association on Thursday 22 September 2005. This is because of its policy of being perpetually against the government of Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau no matter the good thing it does. One of the cronies of its chairman even went into the air to condemn the swearing of commissioners by Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau. In one of the greatest ironies of blind enmity the crony of the chairman said that even though General Buhari was at the Kano Government House he does not have good relations with Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau because he was not accompanied by the Freedom Chairman, the morally bankrupt ANPP and some other disgruntled elements. So these people are the ones to determine who is with General Buhari or not and he cannot decide for himself.

The policy of Freedom Radio does not reflect Islamic ideology this is because they depend on blackmail and insinuations to make money. In their spirited defense against the essay of Salman Yunus Freedom Radio made a photo display of the "stars" or subjects they featured and chided Salman by quoting one of the supporters who wrote: "I leave the judgment to readers if Salman has been fair to call these people illiterate and uneducated politicians". Because of their incoherence and crudeness those who wrote the essay were only confirming the motives of the Freedom Radio, which is to use the elites, to attack each other for the station to make money. It also confirms the station's arrogance because they claimed that they have promoted General Buhari, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, Ado Bayero, Ahmed Sani Yarima and Bukar Abba Ibrahim and others. The station only used these personalities to make money. In fact the station had incited the Kano public against the Emir after the Yelwan Shendam episode during which they read a false report of the Daily Sun. They have always attacked Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau so how can they arrogantly claim that they have promoted him? They even make false reports to instigate the people against the Governor. For example after the swearing in ceremony of four commissioners, three were dropped but they claimed that two were dropped and that people were not happy just to start instigating the public.

Freedom Radio is behaving like other media establishments in the West owned by the Jews who promote some people and destroy others to make money. The spirited defense of the station against Salman Yunusa and others as well the attempt to blackmail the state government is a clear demonstration of the station's commitment to holding the society to ransom. This is a station that claims to be championing the interests of the society but has no interest in promoting social peace except instigation and acrimony for material gain. Once its pocket starts drying the management gives free airtime to opponents of the government who would use all forms of falsehood to attack the government then the money starts flowing because sympathizers of the government would pay to respond and then the opposition headquarters in Abuja would send in money to keep up the fight. This is the spiral that Kano has now been subjected to by this station whose management falsely claims that they depend on God when in the actual sense they depend on blackmail.