Mass Media and National Security in Nigeria  By Gbemiga Bamidele Newsdiaryonline Tue Nov 29,2011

 
Mr Bamidele

This piece seeks to address the responsibilities of the Mass Media vis-à-vis National Security. In other words, it seeks to clarify the National interest implications of the role of the Mass Media in the National Security Management.

This was informed by incessant calls on the mass-media to be careful in reporting issues related to that strictly Islamic militant sect, Boko Haram, “Western education is sin”.

The battle against the radical Islamic sect, scored a big victory recently when the State Security Service (SSS) arraigned a self-confessed spokesman of the group, Ali Sanda Umar Konduga before Chief Magistrate Oyebola Oyewumi of an Abuja Magistrate Court on two-count charge of criminal breach of trust, criminal intimidation and anonymous calls.

Konduga, popularly known as Usman Ali-Zawahiri, was sentenced to a nine year jail term after pleading guilty of the offence. He is still being held as investigations continue on other allegations against him.

National Security should be seen, in the sense of protection of the polity through ensuring that the national interest is known, sustained, promoted and preserved. In  a division of labour setting, national security is ensured through security agencies.

The structure of the various arms of these agencies are known to the public, others are not. Some of them are loud and visible, others are faceless, quiet and invisible. But in sum, they must ensure that Nigeria and its people are protected from internal and external aggression, and that people live their lives in an environment of peace and tranquility. The various arms involved in ensuring that such tasks are done have their different laws setting them up.

Problems have arisen in the past in regard to how this role of securing the interest of state has been perceived by the security agencies themselves. They have sometimes mistaken security vested interests with national security whereas the interest of security agencies is different from the national interest hence there is need to draw a line between the two.

National Security is the decision-making process concerned with the identification of potentials and actual threats, and the mobilization of resources in frame that promptly ensures the safety and stability of the nation state, while simultaneously, enhancing the promotion of national development.  National Interest is the interest of the nation. A nation is a nation because of its people. And a nation can only be one when the people constituting it grow into it in their collective outlook, their collective recognitions and their collective perceptions. These traits must be accommodated at the national level, such that the irreducible minimum viewing of the interests of the nation is that apex picture of one dream, one nation, one destiny. Anything that operates to undermines that one vision, that one dream, that collective looking forward to one salvation undermines national interest.  

It is an individual’s personality, vision, hopes, anticipations, expectations multiplied by the various interest groups in the geographical space that must experience life together expanded to the national level. The nation, in regard to national interest, therefore becomes a nuclear family in that regard. You cannot break it up or split it. It is the irreducible level of performance or expectation or demand the nation makes on those who in a division of labour setting are assigned roles in polity.

The national interest is not nationality interest. Nationality interest is evident where different national groups find themselves in a geographical space where the need to live together and share lives together make them strive to make one nation. National interest has to do with common aspirations of the national groups, of the citizens of the national state. However, it should be such as to override personal or group interests.

When we speak on national interest in regard to Nigeria, we should be speaking of those interests which Nigerians are brought up to regard as values to strive for, to live for, even to die for. They are so entrenched, in time, in the psyche of the Nigerian that any other interest must take second place. The nationality interest or any other interest is not on that account endangered or diminished. It only takes place in the order of things.

Who then determine National Interest?

Is it the people themselves, the elected representatives, security agencies or the media? Is security interest the same as national interest? Is national interest determined outside the nation or country itself?

National interest is not to be determined by a government official or an outfit in the President’s office or by the judiciary or even the legislative, individually or collectively. It is not a national interest for instance, for the police to arrest a journalist for questioning because he wrote something that has to do with the Inspector General of Police; or for copies of a magazine to be seized because it has something critical on the President.

The issue of National Interest is settled in Chapter Two of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended. The Chapter deals with fundamental objectives and Directive Principles of the State Policy. It deals with fundamental obligations of the Government. The government and the people, Political objectives, Educational objectives and Foreign policy objectives. Other issues that deals with fundamental objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy are Environmental objectives, Directive on Nigerian Cultures, Obligations of the mass media, National Ethics and Duties of the citizens.

National Interest cannot be sought outside Chapter two of the constitution which focuses areas of national striving.

Security interests of the state cannot be the same as national interest of Nigeria. The safety and welfare of Nigerians would more readily protect and preserve national interest than the expenditure of more than half of the national budget in equipping the forces that would tame the people if they broke loose because of inequities, deprivations, hunger and disease. How is the economy run; what jobs do Nigerians have to choose for; where are the facilities for education and how do you ensure that Nigeria does not continue to be the country whose ill equipped universities are the most difficult to gain admission into; how do you reduce the use of generator set in a country with so many hydro-electric power plants that have refused to function, when are we going to stop carnage on our roads that are so dilapidated;

The ambitions of many prospective university students are being dashed due to lack of space in the nation’s over ninety-three public and private universities.

In the Universities of Lagos, authorities revealed a pathetic statistics which underscored the reality. Out of the over 100,000 applications received in that University for 2011/2012 academic year, the University offered admission to a total of 8,223 students.

During the 2008-2009 academic year, it was reported that more than a million Nigerian youths wrote the University Matriculation Examination (UME) conducted by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB).

However, the universities were only able to admit 153,000 out of 448,000 successful candidates. The remaining 295,000 qualified would-be students were denied admission for lack of space!

A situation where in years to come more secondary school leavers will obtain the minimum qualification to enter universities, only to be confronted with the inability of existing ones is a serious issue of national interest.

All these are issues to do with the welfare and safety of Nigerians and they are contained in Chapter Two of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria where the body to monitor their observance is identified in Section 22 which provides that “The Press, Radio, Television and other agencies of the Mass Media shall at all times be free to uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people”.

If the courts are empowered to monitor the exercise of rights, nobody outside the court system should purport to do the work of the courts. The same thing is true of chapter two of the constitution. The chapter is where you find what the National Interest is. It is true that the media choose the media to help in monitoring governance and ensuring that government is accountable to the people. It is true that there are elected people country wide and that we cannot deny their authority to determine what the national interest is. But the point must be made however that the National Assembly itself and other organs of government have defined duties that the nation wants performed and the monitoring of this performance on behalf of the people is the legitimate duty of the press.

It is one thing to have a duty to perform; it is quite another thing to say whether the duty is being performed well.

The press has tried its best since independence to monitor governance even before the role was constitutionally granted. In the democracy which started its run on May 29, 1999, the Mass Media has no choice than to perform that role.

Section 45 of the Constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 makes it explicit that the exercise of some of the rights, including the right to freedom of expression under which the media claims protection, are limited in the interest of defence, public safety, public order, public morality or public health, or for the purpose of protecting the rights and freedom of other persons.

But in a democracy, a form of government most suitable for ensuring the protection of these rights there must be that consultation and there is only one open medium for consultation with the people and that medium is the media.

The success of a democracy is therefore easily identifiable from the measure of freedom of the Mass Media in the polity. 

That freedom is quiet ascendable from the much the Mass Media can control, professionally, its own internal operation of generating information, processing it and disseminating it. Any attempt by anyone to interfere with any of these three stages of collection, processing and dissemination of information amount to censorship.

And that is the reason why there must always be a recourse to due process when the Mass Media err because this is a direct proof of the presence in the polity of institutions that must work to entrench democracy. If the media must monitor all others to ensure a transformation of the polity into a Union that can subsist, there must be responsibilities on the media itself as this will lead to a responsible performance of its constitutional role.

Journalists are also enjoin to embrace conscientious conducts as journalism entails a high degree of public trust and to earn and maintain this trust, it is morally imperative for every journalist to maintain and every news medium to observe the highest professional and ethical standards in the exercise of these duties, journalists should always have a healthy regard for the public interest.

Truth is the cornerstone of journalism and every journalist should strive diligently to ascertain the truth of every event. Journalists should try at all times to enhance press freedom and responsibility.

Gbemiga Bamidele, Assistant National Secretary 1 of NUJ can be reached at liftmeahead@yahoo.com or 08033237973.

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This is the document referred to in the Witness

Statement on Oath of Clifford O. Kokogho as

“Exhibit COK.2”

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