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Crisis in the Caliphate? How the Newswatch Stood on the Head of the Truth Dahiru Maishanu Sokoto
I have all my life grown to believe in the sacrosanct nature of the media. The passion and respect I have for the practitioners of the noble profession of the pen has been my driving force of life and my life time ambition has been nothing but that of joining the profession of my desire, heart and conviction. I believe all great men and women of history were journalists; from prophets to philosophers. From Abraham, Mohammed, Jesus, to Aristotle. They were all essentially messengers of truth, conveyors of divine stories; incorruptible vehicles of inviolability and mirrors of justice and fairness.
I can also say that to a very high extent, I got what my heart desired. I have managed to go for the passion of my life; conquered the ego and screwed through the wall fence and came out carrying the pen. I captured the weapon of the truth in the pen and found myself in the profession of Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, Kwame Nkruma, Mahatma Ghandi, Ngugi Wathiango, Dele Giwa, Yakubu Mohammed and Dan Agbese.
But wait a minute; did I mention the trio that gave birth to the Newswatch magazine? That flag ship that led a revolution of sort in Nigeria? The magazine that gave Dele Giwa the courage to die, gave Kudirat Abiola the weapon to dare the tiger and ordinary Nigerians the audacity to challenge military might and chase the soldiers back to the barracks.
The Newswatch was truly my best magazine all this while, until recently. My respect, admiration and blind belief for the Newswatch magazine came crashing like a pack of cards, all in one swoop. I felt that was not reality; may be some kind of dream. Here I was, seeing the truth turned upside down by the flagship itself. Objectivity snow balled into the open horizon; the beautiful bride was suddenly turned into some kind old bony whore wearing pancake powder and old pussy cat perfume to match. That was how my hero magazine, the Newswatch suddenly looked to me when I saw the cover page that screamed: Crisis in the Caliphate, Sultan Abubakar under probe.
My suspicion and consternation became reality as soon as I started reading the story authored by one Demola, who from all intents and purposes is a veteran in his own right. The story captured all the rumors that have been going through the grapevine of the opposition in sokoto for some time now. The baseless rumor had been anchored by an authorless text message that has been making the round misinforming the public on a supposed rancor between the sultanate council and the government of Dr. Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko of Sokoto State. The Newswatch story line followed the scripted pattern of the text message religiously, leaving the reporter writing absolutely nothing outside what the cowardly text authors have been maliciously conveying.
The story’s main thrust is the suspension of four district heads in sokoto owing to barrage of petitions and allegations labeled against them by their respective local government councils. The state government and the sultanate council subsequently set up a joint commission of enquiry that would among other things give the suspended district heads a right of defense. The Newswatch story tried to turn the developments upside down and blamed the government of deliberately creating tension in order to sack the district heads and even spite at the sultanate. This is not only ridiculous but also unbecoming of a magazine of Newswatch’s stand
One of the four suspended district heads as attested by the Newswatch reporter has a criminal case of alleged forgery with the EFCC and as such is better allowed to face these charges rather than continue to double as a traditional ruler as well as a criminal suspect. The second district head is found to be collecting two salaries, one at the state government as a director and second from the sultanate council as a district head. This is unbecoming of a leader that is supposed to exhibit sterling qualities of transparency and truthfulness and one who is supposed to be the repository of the norms and values of the society. The third traditional ruler has a case of using brutal force and intimidation to forcibly collect from ordinary people, their farmlands and cattle, simply because he is privileged to be a traditional ruler. The fourth traditional ruler has busied himself building parrarel mosques opposed to the ones sanctioned by the sultanate and thus creating tension and possibly, sectarianism amongst worshippers.
Very little effort was made by the reporter to hear from the side of both the sultan and the administration before rushing to the press. Even the interviews he did with a few government officials were buried in the report to the extent that their opinions would not have mattered to the reader after all. All the report was trying very hard, with no evidential backing, was to hoodwink the unsuspecting reader into believing that there was indeed a very big deal of fighting going on between the governor and the sultan. Even the well reported rebuttal of these allegations by the sultanate represented by the revered Magajin Garin Sokoto, Alhaji Hassan Ahmed was also buried at the tail end of the report in order to hide the substance from the surface.
Equally, Demola’s use of the pictures of the suspended district heads only helped to further put the lie to the objectivity of the report and definitely qualify it to be undoubtedly a job of a jobber. The pictures of those district heads were surely given to the reporter by some ‘instigators’ since they are not popular enough to be able to be fetched via the internet or on the pages of the newspapers and there is nowhere in the report where the reporter mentioned he had met in person with the suspended traditional rulers.
The documents reproduced by the reporter in the story did not actually serve the interest they were meant to serve. Two of those documents were written in Hausa and perhaps that explained the irony and embarrassment their publication caused to both the writer and those behind him. While the story was trying hard to say that the sultanate has kicked against the suspension of the district heads, those documents were actually messages from the Palace informing them of their suspension and inviting them to attend the sitting of the commission in order to clear themselves of the accusations labeled against them.
The reporter had obviously arrived sokoto with details of the membership of the commission but unknown to him, the membership comprised not only people in government, but the commission was actually chaired by a senior sultanate councilor and Magajin Rafi of sokoto. This again shows that somehow, somewhere, the Newswatch was armed to the teeth by those that are bent on destabilizing the harmony and peaceful coexistence between the government and the sultanate. It is very sad to see serious media outfits degenerating to this pedestal stage of allowing some frustrated politicians to be dictating their story line for them.
Mr. Demola also sold the Newswatch so cheaply when he wrote in just one sentence without explanation that former governor Bafarawa was still popular in the state. This summarized all the reporter was aiming to achieve and sold him out as an apologist of the former “professor of politics” who is still battling out to actually obtain an ordinary diploma in far away America. The reporter failed to inform the reader why he thinks Bafarawa is still popular in the state.
Certainly Bafarawa would not be popular in the state after he had enacted an obnoxious law that emasculated the powers of the sultan and made him unable to appoint even a village head and also openly supported and financed a murderous minority religious sect in the state whose members have been slaughtering people at will. Or is it the insult of opinion and community leaders and turning the treasury into a personal property that qualified the man to be popular in the state? On the other hand, was it not Wamakko that restored the dignity of the sultanate by returning all its powers to it and allowed for religious harmony in the state?
It is indeed sad to note that the Newswatch reporter does not understand Sokoto politics adequately enough to understand what his sponsors’ ulterior motif was in sending him to sokoto to build the story. Bafarawa cannot pretend to love the sultan or the sultanate council more than Dr. Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko because Aliyu is everything to the Sultanate that is not Bafarawa. He, it was that restored not only administrative but even financial autonomy to the sultanate council which starkly contrasts with what obtained under Bafarawa. The hatred exhibited by Bafarawa to the Sultanate council is known to all sokoto people. Had he not attributed his political misfortune to the sultan of sokoto? Yet people like Demola, who know nothing outside Lagos, would say that Bafarawa is still popular in Sokoto. Yes, so popular is he that he lost two elections in one year from the same people he is popular with.
If Bafarawa is truly popular, he wouldn’t need to hide under the canopy of an aging magazine to launder his image in sokoto or cash in on an artificially created ’rumble’ to look for relevance in sokoto which he had ruled for eight years. He wouldn’t also have sanctioned the use of baseless and un-authored, un-acknowledged text messages to create unnecessary attention to himself. He wouldn’t also have bothered to choose the sultanate as an object of attracting sympathy for himself despite all the open hatred and dis-respect he had continuously been exhibiting to the institution during and after his tenure as governor. It is therefore very difficult to find the yard stick which the reporter used to arrive at his current popularity rating of the former governor in the state.
Finally, let me inform Newswatch that sokoto has a very sophisticated readership that can’t be taken for a ride by any news magazine in the country. We know how to separate the chaff from the seed. Consequently, we advise Newswatch to remember their responsibility of being the vanguard of the people and the custodians of truth, the dream of their founding fathers. Newswatch has gone beyond yellow journalism and sympathy seeking politicians should have no place near the premises of the company. Objectivity should form the nucleus of their stories, not unholy matrimony with failed politicians that have lost both touch and base in today’s political equation.
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