Mr. Edetaen Ojo made a name for himself covering the Judiciary Beat for The Guardian Newspapers but is now even more popular with his advocacy and sundry work in the area of rights of journalists through his Media Rights Agenda. He tells SAM NWAOKO his career story.
How did your media journey begin?
My media journey was accidental. When I did my youth service I had worked in a publishing company. So, when I started job-hunting I was looking for what was related to what I had done which was proof-reading/editorial work. I approached The Guardian Newspaper to be a proof-reader. I met the Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Lade Bonuola and I told him I wanted to be a proof-reader. He was shocked and asked me why would anybody want to be a proof-reader? He said no and that he wanted me to apply to be a reporter. At that time I had no idea what that entailed and I was even a bit scared of doing that kind of journalism – reporting and looking for stories and so on. So, I said I couldn’t do it but he asked a number of people to convince me that being a proof-reader was like a dead end and would not lead me anywhere.
He asked me to do an assignment for him. He told me to go to Oshodi and just look around and come back and write a story for him. When I came back and wrote a story, he said “oh, you write very well, so you have to be a reporter. I won’t consider you for anything else.”
That’s how I entered journalism. My background was English. I had studied English in the university. It wasn’t something I had thought I was equipped for or something I was desirous to do but I came to really love the idea of writing stories, breaking stories and seeing my byline in the newspaper. Since then I’ve really been in love with the profession but at some point, during the military rule, an extremely difficult period, I was covering the judiciary, human rights issues and so on. I got very close to a lot of human rights activists at that time including Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Olisa Agbakoba, Femi Falana and all the rest of them.
I did a lot of human rights stories which attracted the attention of the government and they were putting pressure on The Guardian to restrain me. The more I got involved, the more I wanted to do human rights work. So, when the pressure became too much I opted to do freedom of expression work full time rather than trying to do the two together. So, all together, I spent 11 years in The Guardian doing reportorial work essentially.
Indeed, from The Guardian the only other thing Edetaen Ojo is synonymous with is human rights work but before then, what was the experience like being a young and new man in the newsroom?
It was quite intimidating to be honest. There were a lot of very prominent names, some of them on the editorial board but you ran into them in the corridor or the newsroom. We met people like Wole Soyinka who used to come around to write articles from time to time; Odia Ofeimun who was on the editorial board, whom I had admired even when I was in the university. There were also among the reporters, people who were really stars in journalism at that time. Initially, I think it made me feel like I was never ever going to be able to survive here, not with this class of people but many of them were very helpful. I remember in particular Juliet Ukabiala who was the Guardian’s Defence Correspondent that time. She really helped me to make that transition from somebody just dropping into the newsroom to how do you fit into the newsroom – how do you write stories and how do you recognise news in press statements or something like that. I had no experience at all. The first few months were difficult for me and people like that really helped me to understand what journalism was all about. That was the real first training I got from those very well experienced senior colleagues who were writing earth-shaking stories at that time.
Some thought you studied law because some of your colleagues in the judiciary beat wondered how you did it to leave such a mark in that beat.
I think it was interest and love. I came to love journalism and after a while I was assigned to the judiciary and I just fell in love with law. Although I was a reporter and I never read law, I went out of my way to read law books and judgements of courts, rulings and so on. These helped me to have a very good understanding of the issues and of the arguments. Many lawyers immediately recognised that. When I interviewed them and asked them questions, they were from the position of understanding and that helped to create respect. When a journalist comes to interview you and they talk ignorantly, you sort of feel an irritation. But when you meet somebody discussing laws and cases that had been decided and what was the rationale for the decision, it tends to hold people’s attention. One of the first notable lawyers that made me really feel that was Chief Gani Fawehinmi. He called me outside one day and asked “what did you read?” and I said “English” and he said “I’m amazed, you seem to know the law so well.” I told him I was interested in it and I do a lot of reading. He said “wow, if there is anything you want to read in my library just come.” He kept pushing me to go and read law but that never happened. I think it was that interest and the effort to understand it better and be able to break down very technical legal issues for a general audience that gave me some edge.
During your time, the military government brutalised journalists so much. Did you fear for your life or harboured the fear of falling victim somehow?
I did. There were a lot of riots and demonstrations at that time and when those things happen, it doesn’t matter what beat you’re in, you were asked to go and cover. So, suddenly you find yourself covering a riot and either the police or soldiers are on the streets trying to contain situations. It was always scary especially because we were not really trained to cover such situations. So, those were fearful times. Fortunately for me, apart from all the tear gas inhaling, I never really had any untoward experience.
But one time, I was to travel. I did hardly any international travel then and I was going to Kenya. At the airport, my passport was seized and I was prevented from travelling. That was a shock to me. I had written human right stories including those about people’s passports being seized but it never really occurred to me that a journalist could experience that. They SSS put me in their office at the airport there and I was just waiting for them to decide what to do. One of the officers, a lady, walked up to me. She said I was so calm, that a lot of people were always agitated when they sat there. I said ‘well, what do I do?’ We started talking and she explained that my name was in their system but they could not tell from the system why my name was there. It only said ‘stop this person from travelling’ and she said I shouldn’t worry that the worst they could do was probably hold my passport and ask me to go. She said they were waiting for a decision from Abuja. Finally they came and said I wasn’t to be allowed to travel but my passport was given back to me.
That was my first real experience with state security. I was held for about five hours at the airport. When I got back home, it was almost midnight and my family was really shocked, they thought I had travelled. So, subsequently, I became a lot more careful but I think I became a bit more motivated to cover human rights issues because I didn’t think I deserved to be stopped from travelling. I never saw myself as a threat and I didn’t participate in any covert or subversive conversations. It really dawned on me that there were just a lot of efforts on the part of government at that time to prevent people from expressing their views. I think it got the opposite effect on me.
Interestingly, November 2 was the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists as declared by the United Nations General Assembly. When you look at what journalists had gone through, including yourself, in the hands of the military compared what we have now, do you think the democracy we fought is what we have today?
Certainly not… Indeed, there are statements from all over the world about issues concerning the safety of journalists, including from our organisation. We continue to see a situation where nobody is really punished for attacking journalists. We’ve tracked over the last several years, at least 19 journalists killed in Nigeria and no single person has been prosecuted for any of those killings from Dele Giwa to date. So, you just have a situation of absolute impunity for attacking and killing journalists such that it’s almost like a statement to anybody that if you want to commit a crime and go free, make sure the victim is a journalist and nothing will happen to you because nothing has happened to anybody who has attacked a journalist till date.
Our current president is a media owner, so one would expect that given that relationship he would understand that there is a need to protect people who are doing this job because they are serving in the public interest. They are doing this job on behalf of society to create an enlightened society and to even help government in disseminating a lot of its information. They are out there risking their lives and risking their liberty, risking a lot of things and there is no effort at putting a protective mechanism in place to support them or assist them by the state. And when people commit crimes against journalists, at best you have a very shabby investigation; nobody is ever really arrested and charged for any crime against journalists.
So, our democracy does not really suggest that things have changed dramatically from the period of military rule. Indeed, our analysis shows that during the period of military rule, there were fewer killings of journalists than during democratic rule. During military rule, the main challenge was that you were detained under Decree Two, you were locked up. But now that that instrument is not available to politicians, if they cannot detain you successfully because the court will grant you bail after a few days or a few weeks, many of them just use assassins to knock off journalists. Then, there is a lot of physical violence against journalists here and there. So,it’s been very disappointing for me in particular because I had thought that the democratic environment would make it easier for journalists to do their work and that politicians would understand the value of the media and the press in a democracy, but it doesn’t appear to be so.
Your Media Rights Agenda came in 1993 at the height of political activity in Nigeria. The politics of that time was tough and consumed a lot of prominent Nigerians including the winner of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. What was that trigger to leave journalism and begin the quest for media rights full time?
I think it was exactly some of the things you described. At that time, obviously during the entire period of the military rule, we saw a lot of attacks on journalists; journalists being detained without trial or charge, sometimes beaten up and so on; but following the 1993 election that was annulled and the agitation for restoration of the outcome of the election, the clampdown became quite intense. Prior to that time, you had organisations like the Civil Liberties Organisation, Constitutional Rights Project, and Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in existence and they were covering a range of human rights issues but there was no specific or direct focus on media freedom or freedom of expression. Journalists were leading all of the campaign at that time, all of the human rights activists found expression in the media. So, for the government, if you could silence the media, if you could shut down the media, then you could silence those human rights activists. We have to remember that it’s not like today when you have WhatsApp, Facebook and so on. All those things were not in existence, mainstream media was the way to communicate with the public so the clampdown on the media was quite intense. There were media houses that were shut down and prevented from operating; a lot of journalists were detained, some were charged for treason – Chris Anyanwu, George Mbah and others are examples. Many journalists went into exile in a bid to avoid either being killed or arrested. Journalists were disappearing. Bagauda Kaltho disappeared but later it was said that he was trying to plant a bomb and the bomb killed him, which was outrageous.
So, it was in that circumstance that we felt that there was a need to now focus on the welfare and rights of journalists and the media. It wasn’t a democracy but the society generally needs to be able to play this role and inform members of the society. So at that time we decided to take that step to establish an organisation that focussed primarily and exclusively on issues affecting journalists and the media. That was really the push but of course, over time, a number of developments have expanded the scope of our work. Subsequently, the internet came and a lot of things moved online and digital platforms. The whole question of access to information became a big issue around the world and Nigeria was initially lagging behind and we felt that it was important to put a legal framework in place to give people access to information. All of these came together that time to motivate that development.
Six years ago, you, Lanre Arogundade and Akin Akingbulu issued a joint statement to demand that the president then, Muhammadu Buhari, should stop spying on Nigerians. It was in reaction to General Paul Eneche who said they had mechanisms in place to monitor Nigerians on the social media. Do you think spying on journalists and other Nigerians has stopped?
In fact, it has escalated. It definitely has not stopped. The development of technology that enables spying on individuals has really exploded in the last few years and many governments including the Nigerian government and indeed, governments in certain states, are acquiring the technology and using it to spy on their opponents, the opposition and human rights organisations. This happens in so many different ways and one of the ways it happens is to hack into your phone remotely and all your conversations and communications would be monitored through that process. The Israelis developed some of the leading spyware that Nigerian government has acquired. It is not really a secret even though there is total lack of transparency on the issue here. If you go to the website of the Israeli company that sells this spyware, the Nigerian government is one of the customers they listed on their website. A report was released a few weeks ago looking at that the use of spyware technology around the world and in Africa, Nigeria is one of the three countries where they say governments are spending the most amount of money – about $1billion every year to acquire spyware. Of course, the official justification for it is that we are fighting insurgency and terrorism and that you need all of these things but because of the lack of transparency, we are not able to say definitively that it is not actually being used for terrorists and insurgents. It is being used for journalists, human rights activists and political opponents, which is really, first of all, a violation of human rights and also a huge waste of public resources to spend so much just to silence people in a democracy, when the whole essence of democratic rule is that people should be able to express themselves freely and participate in the democratic process.
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