“Sorry, We Forgot to Give You Brown Envelope”

By

Ibrahim Chonoko

ibrobab@aol.com

Sometime in the mid 1990s, my colleagues and I went on a press assignment at the Nigerian Military School in Zaria, Kaduna state. At the event, we were told that the wife of the Commandant and ‘First Lady’ of the school would visit a number of places, including hospitals and orphanage homes to make donations to patients and inmates. The organizers requested that we join the ‘First Lady’s’ entourage so we could give press coverage to ‘Her Excellency’s’ humanitarian visits. My colleagues declined the invitation but I chose to go mainly because of the media organization I represented. I was correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) for Zaria and environs.

When the visit ended at the Beth Torrey Home for Disabled Children in Tukur-Tukur, I decided not to ride with the ‘First Lady’s’ convoy because they were headed for the Military School, where the visit took off. After the convoy sped off, I started walking to the main road to catch a bus to my residence in Kongo. The ‘First Lady’ must have noticed my absence on the entourage because her convoy unexpectedly turned back towards Beth Torrey Home and met up with me when I was mid-way between the Care Home and the main road.

As the vehicles screeched to a sudden halt, the blaring cacophony of sirens died down,  giving  way to the creaking doors going ajar almost simultaneously and the ‘First Lady’ beckoned me to her car. I looked round to see if she meant someone else but saw no one in my immediacy. After moments of hesitation, I moved towards her car and stopped a few paces away. She held out an envelope and said: “Sorry, we forgot to give you brown envelope”. She spoke with some air of authority, thrusting the envelope further to me. I looked at the envelope but made no effort to collect it.

 “I don’t take brown envelopes”, I said, after some moments and moved a few paces back.

“This brown envelope is for you. We forgot to give it to you at the Care Home. That’s why we’ve come back. So take it”, she said, almost commanding.

“Thanks, Ma, but I don’t take brown envelopes”, I said and tried to walk away.

 “You have to take it!” a woman sitting beside the first Lady said, almost shouting. The ‘First Lady’, who was now leaning out of her car held out the envelope and commanded: “Take it! We came back all the way from the main road to give you this brown envelope. You have to take it!” Some members of her entourage, all of them women except for the drivers and security escort came out of their vehicles to see what was happening. I felt besieged and intimidated. I stretched out my hand and accepted the envelope. It was medium-sized and brown! The ‘First Lady’ wore a smile of triumph, thanked me for joining her entourage and sped off amidst blaring sirens.

When I opened the envelope on the bus on my way home, its content set me thinking on people’s perception of, and regard for, journalists; gratification and bribery; tokenism and reward; and the brown envelope syndrome which everyone tacitly accepts its pervasive existence, but no one talks about openly or admits culpability.

I pondered about the so-called ‘First Lady’s’ motive for making such a fuss in giving out one Wazobia –  fifty naira – to a journalist in an envelope, a brown envelope, as Brown Envelope. Was it a show of appreciation or gratification? Was it a token or a gift? Or was it a bribe or a reward? And what about the amount involved? Was that the amount ‘budgeted’ as Brown Envelope or hospitality for the press? Does the society, through the First Lady’s eyes see journalists as miserable and hapless chaps who should be given the crumbs?

Most of the questions above and many more are as relevant today as they were in the 1990s, if not more, and are still begging for answers. The brown envelope syndrome or envelopmental journalism still pervades the nooks and crannies of Nigerian media establishments and the society at large.

Metaphors, phrases and slangs such as Qua or Communiqua, Press Release, Egunje, Welfare, Freebies, etc are active vocabularies among working journalists across the spectrum. The phenomenon, known as Gombo in Cameroon, Cheque Book in South Africa, Hospitality across many developed countries in the West adversely affects the profession and its practitioners in varying degrees across the world.

According to the International Federation of Journalists, IFJ, “journalism for sale is one of the greatest challenges facing the media today”, and added: “The practice erodes public confidence, undermines professionalism and makes a mockery of ethical values.”

No-salary, low-salary and non-payment of salary, coupled with poor journalistic training are usually adduced as the main reasons journalists resort to the humiliating practice of Brown Envelope journalism. But a look beyond the surface would reveal that these reasons are too simplistic and do not represent the real reasons journalists and media practitioners engage in the demeaning and unethical enterprise.

Quite often those who engage in envelopmental journalism defend their actions with statements such as “if you don’t eat, you won’t stop them eating; if you don’t eat, you starve; if you can’t beat them, join them; eat or you will be eaten”, etc. But as watchdogs, journalists have the sacred duty to guard and guide the society on the path of equity and fairness, and expose acts of injustice and their perpetrators.

How could a journalist play his onerous duty of exposing and checkmating debilitating ills plaguing the society such as corruption and abuse of public trust if he chose to play the accomplice with public looters and thieves for the miserable crumbs as his prize? An adage says a man loses courage with each act of injustice he commits. So it would only take firm resolve and steadfastness for truth for the journalist to defeat the dark forces whose proponents lose courage by the minute because of the heinous acts of injustices they commit.