Where Is The Northern Press

Where Is The Northern Press?

Dr. Abdullahi Adamu

Nasarwa State Governor

Forwarded by Mohammed Haruna

Being Opening Remarks by His Excellency, Dr. Abdullahi Adamu, (Sarkin Yakin Keffi & Aare Obateru of the Source) at an Interactive Session with the Arewa Media Forum holding at the Crystal Gardens Hotel, Kaduna, Wednesday, 22 June, 2005

I am pleased to note that Arewa Media Forum is not an exclusive club for the crème de al crème of journalism in our part of the country. People from other professional groups are also members of the forum. It is easy to see the social relevance of a forum such as this because where two or three people from different professional backgrounds meet, there is a fruitful fertilization of ideas. Ideas rule the world.

I feel privileged to be among you tonight. I thank you sincerely for inviting me to be part of the interactive session of Arewa Media Forum. I welcome all interactions between and among the various professional groups in our country because they sow the seeds of understanding among our people. I particularly welcome interactions between journalists and politicians because they widen the frontiers of mutual understanding. Our meeting tonight is part of a series of interactive sessions initiated by the forum to dialogue with political leaders, technocrats, captains of industry and the civil society in the northern states. I sincerely commend you for this initiative.

This being an interactive session, I am not required to deliver a lecture. Nevertheless, to kick start our discussion, I wish to make brief remarks by raising the question: Where Is the Northern Press? In raising this question, I am not, for one moment, trying to suggest that the name of this forum be changed. If we need a torch light in the daytime to find the northern press. I believe, the question must be of more than a passing interest to the Arewa Media Forum as it should be to the rest of us. It is important to me as one of the northern political leaders, as a Nigerian and as a man who believes that the press in every democracy has a critical role in moulding the society and ensuring good governance. There is yet no substitute for the press in the effective dissemination of information and as an agency for mass education, particularly in a federation with autonomous constituent parts, each at a different stage of development, each of which has its peculiar interests to protect and promote. If we cannot find a northern press, it follows that we cannot hear the northern voice.

At the northern peace forum here in Kaduna in November last year, I drew the attention of the distinguished audience of northern leaders to the fact that in both the electronic and the press media, "the north is fatally out-gunned." I crave your indulgence to repeat some of the issues that I raised then and which I believe are still germane to all discussions pertaining to the interests of the north as a major constituent of the Nigerian federation:

"There is no major government or privately-owned newspaper or newsmagazine in the entire north. The New Nigerian which was once the most authoritative newspaper in the country, is today hardly the newspaper we used to know and cherish and which alone took on the southern press in defense of northern and national interests. Under-funded and under-staffed, uncertain as to its ownership for quite sometime now, we cannot expect the newspaper to do much better than it is doing now.

"The late Major-General Shehu Musa Yar' Adua founded The Reporter newspaper here in Kaduna. That newspaper was closed down on the orders of the federal government for an undisclosed offence. That government was headed by a northerner. The death of that newspaper is our collective loss.

“The Democrat, another national newspaper published here in Kaduna, is also no more. We are left with the Trust group of newspapers, which are doing their commendable best to let the Northern voice be heard.

“Is there something, I wonder, that makes it impossible for newspapers to survive in this part of the country? Perhaps, the answer lies in our stubborn refusal to appreciate the role the news media play in the development of societies and in the contest for power, particularly in a democracy. The balance of power or the balance of terror is a stabilizing factor in every society. I do not argue for a press war. I argue for freedom from other people’s mass media in order that we may be heard.”

I should add here that the chairman of Arewa Media Forum, Malam Mohammed Haruna, bravely ventured into the newsmagazine industry with the Citizen weekly newsmagazine. That excellent publication too went the way of the other publications. We must pray hard that the Trust group of newspapers breaks the jinx.

Since I made the observation under reference at the northern forum, nothing has changed in this part of the country. I find no evidence that things are about to change soon. It worries me. The press is not an institution set up by an act of parliament. Its members, as the late American president, Richard Nixon, once observed, are not elected by anyone. But the press has proved itself a strong pillar of democracy and human development. Politicians may not be entirely happy with its intrusive habit but none of them can ignore or do without the press. If the press is an evil then it is a necessary evil. I submit that the press is not evil even if some evil- minded people occasionally use it to do their bidding. Nearly all the democratic nations of the world have borrowed from the British and accorded the press its rightful place as the fourth estate in their individual forms of government.

The framers of our constitution took the role of the press in sustaining democracy and making the government accountable to the people so seriously that they accorded it a formal watchdog function in the constitution. Section 22 of the constitution empowers the press and other agencies of the mass media "to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people." No other profession enjoys this constitutional privilege.

There are 19 state governments in the north. The seat of the federal government is also in the north. Without a northern press, it follows that there is no watchdog watching over the conduct of our state governments or of the federal government from the northern perspective. Are we not missing something vital and critical to democracy in this part of the country?

Implicit in that sacred constitutional duty of the press is this: if the government fails to account for its actions and decisions to the people, the press and other agencies of the mass media must be held responsible. In other words, if government fails, blame the press. We need the press to take the blame when things go wrong. One would have thought that that was a good enough reason for northern political leaders to commit themselves to a viable press and other agencies of the mass media.

One has often heard it said by journalists in self-defence that the press is merely a messenger in the society. It may carry good or bad news but it is not the maker of the news. If the news is bad, blame the newsmakers, not the press. If we accept that the role of the press in a democracy is this passive, we undermine one of the great pillar of democracy. The press is an active, not a passive democratic institution.

We are confronted daily with the evidence that the Nigerian press generally does not undestand, and does not care to understand the north, its people and their cultures. None of us here can deny that quite often the north is so comprehensively misrepresented in the southern press that we are driven to shed quiet tears in the safe corners of our homes and officers. When this happens, there is no northern medium to respond with the correct information. The prevailing image of the north in the Lagos- Ibadan axis of the press is a caricature of the northerner as a greedy individual who does not sow but seeks to reap from the sweat of others. As I pointed out at the northern forum, the demand over resource control in the oil-producing states is in truth a protest against the right of the north to share from the earning from crude oil. The people of the Niger Delta believe that northern leaders stole the oil wealth to turn every road in the north into a dual carriageway. Deliberate falsehood plays rather well in the southern press and in the oil-producing communities. The north has no response to it either, and so, in the absence of a counter, correct information, the lies pass for the truth.

Very little is reported of the north in the southern press. The north receives a generous press space only when the news is comprehensively bad and fits in neatly with the preconceived ideas about the region. Minor disagreements in the north and among northerners are blown into exaggerated crisis and interpretations are immediately provided to suggest that the entire nation is in danger.

Foreigners rely on our news media to get news about what is happening in our country. If the media say that the news is consistently bad in one part of the country, then that is the information they are bound to accept. Naturally, they will keep away. I do not wish to suggest, for one moment, that the press should ignore or suppress bad news from the north because that is as deleterious to the health of our democracy as the portrayal of our country as a nation without redeeming features. I ask only that it is important for the press to understand the north and the people it is reporting on. The New York Times has as its motto: " All the news fit to print " I take it that some news is not fit to be printed by the press or aired by the electronic media. To strike a balance requires mature judgement on the part of the publishers. editors and their reporters. I believe that if the press sees itself as a more mature institution whose primary role of informing and educating is a patriotic mission, it would commit itself to the unity of our dear country and the north would cease to be a whipping boy

for whatever goes wrong with the country.

The absence of viable northern press is a missing link in our chain of national development. Such a press will not serve the interests of the north alone. It will serve the interests of the nation. It will help to explain the north to the south and the south to the north. It will respond to misinformation and mis-education of the citizenry. It will help to build bridges of understanding and mutual respect among the constituent units of the federation.

Without a viable press, the north loses out in the area of developmental journalism. Ironically, this part of the country needs all the assistance it can get to quicken its development. The press is a capital intensive venture .It does not make quick returns to its investors either. If that fact does not scare southerners away from investing handsomely in the press and other media of mass communication, why should it scare northerners? Maybe, not many northerners are filthy rich. But we have enough of them who are credit-worthy. The problem is not lack of fund. The problem is our refusal to face the critical challenge of investing in and sustaining a viable northern press.

Let me throw the challenge to the Arewa Media Forum. I urge you to take up the challenge of sensitizing northern politicians and businessmen into taking on this challenge. It is one challenge whose time has come.

Thank you and God bless.