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Professionalizing Journalism: Which Way For NUJ? By Muhammad Khalid
For the last fifteen years and perhaps more, stakeholders in journalism have occupied themselves with considering what should be the most acceptable status for the Nigeria Union Journalist as the journey to professionalize the art of journalism approaches a very critical stage. One thing that has been accepted with a great degree of unanimity is that there is no going back on professionalization, the only unresolved question being methodology and conceptual status of the union during and after the exercise.
There have been three major attempts to address these unresolved questions, all in Ilorin, Kwara State – March 1995, March 1998 and October 2005. butwhile the 1998 conference succeeded in coming out an acceptable ethical code for Nigeria journalist, the other two were futile exercises.
Professionalisation in journalism can be defined as the return to ethical practices through proper professional concepts, that is, adopting an acceptable code of practice, an acceptable regulatory body charged with arresting professional breaches including of course setting standards of practice, qualification, training etc and the identification and keeping of names and records of journalists that have met those standards. The regulatory body will use the code in determining whether there has been a breach or not and decide the nature of sanctions whenever and wherever become necessary.
Nigeria journalists have always been open to any process aimed at sanitizing the profession as that will go along way in retaining public confidence in their actions. Journalism is a major institution in the country not only for being the fourth of the realm but because of the sacredness of it practices which require a great deal of public trust. A single misrepresentation by the media of any national event cause asocial commotion, uproar or even an outright social disorder that may lead to complete breakdown of law and social harmony in the country. The ethical code of Nigeria journalists requires from them the highest sense of patriotism as an embodiment of honesty, transparency, humility and a general commitment and respect for national objectives and interests. Because they serve as a mirror through which society looks at itself, journalists are required by the public to always remain above board and carryout their national duties in public view. Journalists can hardly escape general public scrutiny of their activities, action, and professional behaviors both individually and as a group.
This therefore brings us to the question of what, actually is the problem. NUJ will be confronted with questions in this regards. The first is whether to go completely professional and abandon union practices. Those who support this theory insist existence. This is the position that has always been forcefully pushed by media owners, especially the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria) NPAN) and including, sadly enough, the former Minister of information, Prince Tony Momoh who himself is not only an authority in journalism but an institution on his own.
The second option is for NUJ to embrace completely, true professionalisation but retain the dual status of both a professional associate and a full-fledge trade union organization which will serve as a safety-valve against employers’ excesses. This will be inline with the status of the National Association of Nigeria Nurses and Midwives (NANMW) and the Nigeria Union of teachers (NUT) both of them having such dual status, with d their professional activities taken care off by their respective professional wings. While Nurses have a Nursing council, NMUJ has the Teachers Registration council.
Nigeria journalists are now at the crossed-roads and required extreme care and caution in making their choice. Any slight mistake is capable of endangering to a great extent, the professional and its entire members. Journalists cherish both dehumanizing condition without equally endangering the nation and its citizens. The right to strike for any wage-earner is inalienable and must never be sacrificed. NUJ particular will derive greater advantages in maintaining its union that have maintained the dual status. Since the creation of Nigeria Labour Congress in 1978 the NUT and NANMW have never complained of raw deal from their relationship with the congress. Infact, these two unions have maintained a leading role in the labour movement to date. NUJ particularly pays the highest affiliation dues to the Nigeria Labour Congress. Being in the NLC and with a right to strikes, NUJ will confer on itself the status of a trade union which, even when note exercised, its being there becomes a major instrument of defence thereby providing union members with a great sense of security of employment. Workers are toilers and have to engage their employers in a very healthy rivalry about the surplus valve accruing to their companies.
Secondly, the idea of opting out of the trade union practice is being pushed by media employers, especially the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria. That in itself is crying more than the bereaved. For an employer who does not live up to its terms of employment even as guaranteed by the constitution, there is no guarantee that workers’ rights will be respected without sometimes flexing some muscles. More so, such an employer has severally defaulted in payments of the statutory wages. Worst still, if an employer can warn his workers not to bother him about their wages because “your appointment letters are your meal tickets”, how can the workers give him any trust of judgment over the their interest? Or an employer who has not paid salaries for more than a year to claim that the interest of his workers in respect of whether to unionize o not can be of concern to him is indeed suspect, questionable.
Trade unions traditionally have always served as a safety – valve between its members and the employers. They remain the dreaded weapon available to the working class, especially the contemporary type who believed that salaries are privileges through blood and sweat struggles.
Third, many Nigerian easily draw lessons from the British public what happens in British. Recently, the British National Union of Journalism (NUJ) become so relaxed with media employers in the UK and were deceive to opt out off the trade union congress (TUK), UK’s only central labour organization. Such historically wrong step was taken in good faith by British journalism only discover, almost immediately that the move was treacherous, retrogressive and an alarming blunder of all times by them and immediately after coming to this conclusion, the NUJ (UK) quickly retraced its steps and, rejoined the TUC. It took British journalists five year of hell being without a trade union. The NUJ’s return to TUC re-focused journalists in the UK in order to quickly recover what they lost in those five horrible years. British journalists are now fully in control of their destiny and are playing their rightful role as the conscience of the labour movement in Britain generally.
Fourth, perhaps it is only important to also address the definition of who a journalist is by Tony Momoh, atleast for want of clarification. He had, in a response to a question from the floor at the last Reformation Conference in Ilorin (2005) said that even after professionalisation, a journalist is some one engage in the media on full-time. “A mass communication graduate” he insisted “who works in the bank cannot be a journalist unless he returns to the media”. If this is the case then there is contradiction. It means we cannot compare ourselves with lawyers or doctors. Professional association in our time classified into two, thus; association of members and institutes of members.
Examples of association of members are Nigeria Bar Association, Nigeria Media Association etc. association of members draw their membership from persons that have earned internationally recognized qualifications, a minimum of which is a universal degree. Once such qualifications are obtained, membership finally screened through laid down open procedures. In the case of institutes of members, there are internal mechanisms and criteria. Such institutes include those of builders, accountants, management etc. admission into institutes are mostly determined by a member’s devotion to the cause off the profession rather than academic attainments as obtained in most associations. Architects, surveyors etc are a few exceptions. In order to properly professionalize, a standard definition is therefore necessary. It will also be important to determine whether we will operate like institutes with their cult-like mechanisms or those of professions that use basic qualifications or we incorporated the best of the two and maintain another dual status.
Finally, the NUJ was formed as a professional association on 15th March 1955. It earned its dual status of being both a trade union and professional body through Trade Union (Amendment) Decree 22 of August 1978 along with 41 other trade unions, two of which have the same status with NUJ (i.e. NANMW and NUJ). We may therefore compare the pre and post ‘1978 operations and see which one suit our current situation better. It must be realize that we started to clamour for trade union status due to the terrible state of the union then. The NUJ between 1955 and 1978 was run like a typical modern-day cult with its activities confined to a select few. There were no records kept and elections were haphazardly done. At that time, a group of some few journalists could easily corner the union to a section off their parlours, and, (in few exceptions), to specialized beer parlours self-styled as “press Clubs” and all union operations carried out there. It is clear that whichever leadership that might have emerged from such elections had no commitment or obligation to Nigeria journalists at large.
This was particularly so especially with respect to those outside the urban centers of Lagos, Ibadan and perhaps Kaduna and Enugu. To opt out the NLC therefore to the pre-1978 situation. Perhaps now, more than that period, such an emerging leadership will operate in a mafia-like style that is certain to devour the members to a devastating coma. And in a society such as ours, at a time of contemporary universal crazy for democracy, particularly in an era of a uni-polar superpower, God save Nigeria journalists from such a monster!
MUHAMMAD KHALID E-mail: khalidmuhamad@yahoo.com
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