|
The Whole Truth? By Mohammed Haruna
Being text of the review of The Whole Truth: Selected Editorials of The Guardian (1983 – 2003) by Mohammed Haruna at the book presentation on December 15, 2005, at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, Lagos.
Mr. Chairman, the letter from the managing director/editor in chief of The Guardian Newspapers, Eluem Emeka Izeze, inviting me to review the book of editorials to be presented shortly by the Nobel Literature laureate, Wole Soyinka, described it as “a compendium of the best and most important editorial comments of The Guardian for 20 years, covering local, African and world affairs.” Having gone through the book, I believe Emeka’s description is somewhat exaggerated. He would have been more accurate if he had described the book as a compendium of SOME of the best and most important editorial comments of the newspaper during the period in question. I say this because from my own small collection of editorials of Nigerian newspapers, including those of The Guardian, I could see that not all of its best and most important editorials made it into the book. I will return to this point before the end of this review.
Meanwhile, I must agree with its editor , Reuben Abati, that The Whole Truth is a landmark in the history of Nigerian journalism. As he said in his introduction to the book, this is the second time in the history of the country’s journalism that a newspaper would publish a collection of its editorials. The first, as Abati pointed out, was the publication by the Nigerian Tribune of some of its editorials between 1949, when it first appeared, and 1989, when it clocked 40.
An effort similar to The Guardian’s was made two weeks or so ago when the Newswatch magazine launched The Best, a collection of its columns. This was as part of the celebration of its 20th anniversary. The difference between The Whole Truth and The Best is obviously the fact that the one is institutional opinion while the other is personal. This difference makes the former arguably a more significant contribution to the eternal dialogue on how to make Nigeria a unified, stable, peaceful and developed country.
In his preface to the book, Patrick Dele Cole, a consultant of sorts to, and a friend of, The Guardian, said selecting the editorials for the collection was not an easy task. It couldn’t have been. Since The Guardian went daily on July 4, 1983 it has published an editorial virtually every day. This means no less than 300 editorials each year. This, in turn, means 6000 editorials between 1983 and 2003. If my count is accurate, The Whole Truth contains 218 editorials. Obviously selecting even ten times that number out of at least 6,000 could not have been easy, whatever the criteria used.
In his preface to the book, Dele Cole also said the preponderance of editorials were “on the critical side”. On his part, Abati, in his introduction, talked about the book “focus(ing) on the high moments of Nigerian history during the period, with an accent on principles, values, issues and personalities.” These, are not very useful as guides to how and why the editorials in the book were selected. After all criticism is essentially what editorial writing is all about. And any editorial that does not talk about principles, values, issues and personalities is neither worth the name nor would it be worth reading.
However, whatever the criteria used in compiling the editorials in The Whole Truth, the book is proof positive on why The Guardian is justified, by and large, to claim that it is the flagship of Nigerian journalism.
When Dele Cole said the preponderance of the editorials in the book were “on the critical side”, I thought he sounded somewhat apologetic. “The themes in this book”, he said, “have been on the critical side, not because Nigeria is not doing well, but because we believe it can do better.”
Truth be told, Nigeria has not done well since independence in 1960. On the contrary it has done badly enough to justify most, if not all, of the criticisms made against its rulers by the media. Since independence the quality of life of its citizens has only plummeted such that today more than 70% of its people, according to World Bank figures, live below the poverty. Cole did not therefore have to sound defensive about The Guardian’s criticisms of the Nigeria’s governments in its editorials of its first 20 years.
If the paper had been “on the critical side” in its editorials it was only doing its job as any respectable newspaper should. However, the important thing is that in being critical, a newspaper does so only on the basis of the truth and nothing but the truth.
Unfortunately it is not possible for the press, by its very nature, to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth all the time. Journalism, as it is often said, is history in a hurry. The journalist has neither the leisure of the historian, nor the skills of a forensic expert, nor the authority of, say, a doctor or a lawyer, to arrive at the whole truth. As Walter Lippman, the American media guru once said, “The theory of a free press is that the truth will emerge from the free reporting and discussion – not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account.”
Obviously then The Whole Truth can be no more than The Guardian’s own version of the “truths” about the people and events that have influenced the direction of the country during the first 20 years of the newspaper. This much is conceded by the editor of the book when he said the title was chosen “only in a descriptive, metaphorical sense.”
The test of how useful The Whole Truth is as a historical document is therefore not whether the editorials in the book have told the whole truth and nothing but the truth – something which is impossible. The test of its usefulness lies in how much it has contributed to the emergence of a consensus among the country’s various ethnic, regional and religious groups such that the country can move forward.
When The Guardian started out more than 20 years ago, it resolved, according to Cole, “to avoid sensationalism and be dedicated to factual reporting.” It also resolved, he said, to write editorials only after “an exhaustive and painstaking examination” of the facts and the issues. This, he said, was because if the information on which the paper based its opinion was false, “then necessarily that opinion would be faulty.”
On the whole the newspaper appears to have adhered to its own strictures. A close reading of all the over 200 editorials in The Whole Truth would show that the newspaper took into consideration the arguments on all sides to an issue before arriving at its own position. It may have given short shrift to some of these positions in many cases, but it almost always acknowledged their existence
There are, however, a few critical exceptions to this trend. These are to be found largely within the issue of the perennial regional contest for power at the center, whatever shape this contest takes. Perhaps it is the ownership and control of the newspaper, but the fact is that on this subject the newspaper seems to habour a deep seated prejudice against the North, if not against Muslims, who are predominant in the region.
The book lists 37 ladies and gentlemen as having served as members of the newspaper’s editorial board between 1983 and 2003. It also lists another 20 as visiting members of the board and a further 15 as consultants. Only a negligible number of the members of the editorial board are either from the North or are Muslims, none of the visiting members is from the North or a Muslim and only four of the consultants are Muslims and from the North.
This composition may be in evitable in a country like Nigeria with huge regional disparities in education and the professions between the regions and with huge transport constraints, but it does not excuse the kind of blind prejudice that The Guardian often shows against the North, if not against Muslims.
Mr. Chairman, at least three of the newspaper’s most important editorials support my contention, two of which are included in The Whole Truth. These are the editorial of April 28, 1992 titled “Questions over the 1991 Census” and that of January 4, 2001 titled “The Struggle for True Federalism.” The one omitted from the book was that of October 7, 1992 titled “TO SAVE NIGERIA.” All three dealt with issues central to the stability and the very existence of the country.
To begin with the editorial on the 1991 census, The Guardian questioned its credibility in spite of its being widely regarded as the most reliable since colonial times. Of the questions it raised probably the most significant was the idea that coastal and forest areas are, by definition, more populous than their hinterlands.
“If environmental considerations and established patterns are any guide” the newspaper said, “coastal and forest regions where economic activity is intense should be more thickly populated than more arid and less hospitable climes. The 1991 census figures for the South vis-à-vis those of the North deviate seriously from the established pattern.”
This simply is voodoo demography. First the newspaper mixed up population density with its size when it is obvious that a small area that is dense can have a smaller population than a bigger area that is sparse. At 730,885 square meters the North is more than three times the size of the South. Of course this size would have been of no consequence if the region was arid and inhospitable as the newspaper insinuated. The fact, however, is that the North is not arid nor is it inhospitable.
Elementary geography teaches us that the world’s arid zone lies between 14 degrees and 30 degrees north and south of the Equator. Most of Nigeria lies well outside this zone: the country lies between 4 degrees and 13 degrees north of the Equator. This means only the very northern fringes of the North is somewhat arid and inhospitable.
Second it is, in any case, not true that coastal and forest areas, by definition, are more hospitable than their hinterlands. If this were so, first the world’s population would be concentrated along its Equator and second, there would no large concentrations of people in the hinterlands of the world’s continents. We all know that the distribution of the world’s population follows no such pattern.
Mr. Chairman, if I may now move to the issue of the country’s federal structure. In its editorial of January 4, 2001, the newspaper chose to blame the North for what it described as the enthronement of “unitary absolutism” on the country in place of its original “true federalism”. “By 1966”, said the paper, “the military, hijacked by Northern interests, had set the machinery of subversion in motion”. Somehow the newspaper appeared to have conveniently forgotten that it was Southern politicians who first encouraged the military, then under the leadership of a Southerner, to break its oath of defending the country’s elected government.
The newspaper also appeared to have forgotten that the Northern military leadership that regained power in July 1966, following the first coup in January, only divided the country’s then four regions into 12 states because of tremendous pressure from Southern and Northern minorities to free them from what they saw as their servitude under the majority tribes in their regions.
The inevitable consequence of this break-up of the regions into such smaller states was that the power equation between the regions, on the one hand, and the center, on the other, shifted for good in favour of the center. In other words, instead of the states ceding residual powers to the centre, it was the centre that now delegated power to the states. Therefore if anyone was to blame for the distortion of our federal structure, it was certainly not the Northern leadership that never really wanted the old regional arrangement tampered with.
In any case, it seems strange, at least to me, that anyone can describe a region whose economy is the food basket of the country and the main source of its protein, and a region grossly disadvantaged in the federal bureaucracy and in the professions as a region of a “predatory group of power-mongers.” It is even stranger to me that more than two years after power shifted to the South, The Guardian would persist in talking about this so-called predatory class seeking “to cling stubbornly to a veto power whose time has passed.”
The basis of all this talk about the North being a predator region is the overwhelming dominance of the oil produced from the South - specifically from the Delta region - in national revenue. However, even though oil provides more than 80% of national revenue, it is economic illiteracy for anyone to equate it with the country’s economy. In spite of its size and its importance in government expenditure, oil has very limited linkages to the rest of the economy, unlike agriculture which accounts for more than 70% of the country’s employment, and produces over 45% of its GDP against less than 30% for oil.
This economic illiteracy of equating oil with the nation’s economy first occurred in the newspaper’s editorial of October 7, 1992. From its title alone – “TO SAVE NIGERIA” – the editorial was arguably the newspaper’s most important during the period in question. It seemed strange therefore that it was omitted from The Whole Truth. “Those who take the most,” said this editorial, “are those who supply the least to the common pool. Those who supply the most to the common pool are those who take the least.” Somehow, the newspaper forgot that oil wealth is essentially an un-worked for riches. True, the people of the Delta region that produces the stuff suffer much depravation and therefore deserve the greatest attention from government. However, the elites of the region are no less parasitic on oil wealth than the elites of other regions.
The fact is that distribution of oil wealth is a matter of interest mostly only to the country’s upper class which cuts across tribe, region and religion. This is the predatory class that the editorial writers of The Guardian should be fighting, not anyone merely on account of his tribe, region or religion.
However, the most conclusive evidence that the newspaper’s objection to Babangida’s political parties was prejudice and not principle was yet come. After dismissing the two parties as imposed and unnatural, it went further to condemn their presidential primaries conducted earlier in the year as being so “massively, cynically and shamelessly rigged” that any government that arose there from was bound to “lack legitimacy.” “The situation is worse,” the paper continued. “The two presidential candidates that will emerge at the end of the day are from the same part of the country – the far North. This is disturbing giving the national composition of the country.”
Six years after this editorial, the two and a half parties that emerged from the short transition programme of General Abdulsalami Abubakar – the base of the half-party, the Alliance for Democracy, was so narrow it had to enter a strange alliance with the All Peoples Party to field its presidential candidate at the expense of the APP - produced two presidential candidates from an even narrower base than was the case in the Babangida transition programme. For, whereas the two presidential candidates in 1992 were from different zones in the North, those in 1998 were from one zone in the South. It is highly instructive that this development never inspired any doomsday editorial from The Guardian.
Mr. Chairman, I have argued so far that other than its prejudice against the North, if not against Muslims, the quality of the editorials of The Guardian qualifies it for its self-proclaimed title of the flagship of Nigerian journalism. However, this prejudice against the North is not the newspaper’s only shortcoming.
In his contribution to Voices from within: Essays in Nigerian Journalism, edited by Lanre Idowu and published by Diamond Publications, Godwin Agbroko, writing on the evolution of newspaper editorials in Nigeria was critical of the general style of editorials in the country. “Newspaper editorials,” he said, “need to be shorter, more concise and easier to read. The ponderous, lengthy editorial is still stable fair in Nigerian newspaper.” With a few exceptions like Vanguard and Punch, one cannot agree more.
Certainly, most of The Guardian’s editorials, in and out of The Whole Truth, seem to suffer particularly from these shortcomings. This didn’t use to be the case in its earlier days in the eighties when its editorials were simple, concise and lucid and, like its twin editorial of August 21 1984 on “Pregnant brides …” and “…Pregnant bride prices”, and an earlier one of September 15, 1983 on “1004 and All That”, the editorials were occasionally spiced with such good humour as made them highly readable.
In its wisdom the newspapers management included only 24 of its editorials from this period of the eighties in The Whole Truth; 13 from 1983, seven from 1984, four from 1985 and none from 1986 through 1989.
Perhaps the editorials of the newspaper have become increasingly ponderous and lengthy because its editorial board has come to be dominated by the university type who love big grammar and complicated syntax, something which Abati, the chairman of the board apparently found satisfactory: the newspaper’s editorial board, he boasted in his introduction to The Whole Truth was “the equivalent of a department in a serious university in terms of the robustness of its arguments, the quality of its manpower and the intellectual independence of its members.” Even then the editorials can still be simple concise and readable. After all the essence of intellectualism is simplicity that is at the same time rigorous. In concluding his introduction, Abati said The Whole Truth is perhaps one more step towards writing the biography of the newspaper itself. From the servings in The Whole Truth Nigerians can hardly wait for that day. Before then, however, the newspaper must try to rediscover its old simplicity, lucidity and humour, so that the next serving will be more readable than the book we are about to lunch this morning.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, thank you all.
Mohammed Haruna December 15, 2005
|