It has been globally acknowledged that synonymous with a stable and development-oriented democracy is the conduct of periodic free and fair elections. These elections, which serve as means of recruiting personnel into the various public leadership positions, are heralded by intense political campaigns. The campaign is usually characterised by mudslinging, political macheting in place of political marketing, hatred and bickering which, in turn, often lead to an orgy of violence and killings. This ugly phenomenon is not peculiar to the developing democracies.
Electioneering period in developing democracies, especially in Africa and Nigeria in particular, has lamentably become a period of ‘civil war,’ rather than a war of ideas on how the lot of the citizenry can be bettered by the political class. The 2015 general election in Nigeria typified what hate-speech campaigns can do to the psyche of a country and its citizens in the continuing quest for a democratically stable polity.
The utterances of the principal actors and their ardent loyalists not only inflamed passion and emotion but also accounted, largely, for the attendant loss of lives and destruction of property before, during and after even successive elections in most parts of the country.
As Nigeria and Nigerians look forward to another round of the general election, beginning from next month, the atmosphere is not unlike that of 2015, as the environment has, once again, become heated up by the various political gladiators and their different political camps. Rather than seek to promote peace, unity and harmony among the citizens, most of the politicians have been engrossed in giving speeches that tend to further polarise the country, partitioning people and their interests along ethnic biases and religious differences.
The media, especially the social media, in the course of playing their traditional roles of educating, informing and entertaining, jettisoned ethics and have become a willing tool in the hands of the politicians to disseminate information and speeches bothering on hatred and which are capable of derailing the democratic process in a country still seeking to find its feet, about 20 years after the birth of the current Republic. More guilty is the social media with the unregulated and unchecked activities of its practitioners, otherwise called citizen journalists, threatening the socio-economic and political fabrics of the country.
Not oblivious of the importance of the media and the activities of the practitioners in the build-up to the 2019 elections and thereafter, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), a pioneer German political foundation, put together a training programme for selected journalists from media houses, including print, radio, television and the social media. Founded by Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany after the Second World War, KAS sees Nigeria as very critical and important to the African Continent. It thus seeks to promote democracy, rule of law and prosperity for all in the country, nay the African Continent.
Gathered in Abuja from December 4-5, 2018 for training, tagged “Promoting Violence-Free Elections by Media,” were 26 journalists from the traditional media (print, radio and television) and the social media. Also ensconced with these journalists were resource persons who have diverse experiences in media and media relations, especially as it relates to reportage of elections.
During the two-day training, the KAS intervention and the conversation was as interestingly participatory as it was also as exploratory, seeking ways out of the dangers latent in pre-election, election and post-election reportage laced with hate speeches and which resultant effects can promote an unending hatred among the citizenry and cause collateral and irreparable damages to national unity.
Papers were delivered, suggesting solutions to identified problems and impediments to election reportage devoid of sensationalism and outright falsehood.
One of the resource persons and Head of Department of History, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Dr Tunji Ogunyemi, in one of his papers titled History of Electoral Violence in Nigeria, traced the beginning of violence at elections to the defunct Western Region during the infamous we ti e conflagration in the First Republic epoch of 1960 and 1966. Ogunyemi sees electoral violence as any hostile act involving the use or threat of use of force to exert electoral advantage. He did not fail to mention how the manipulation of the electoral process by the party at the central government in the First and Second Republics triggered violent reactions that culminated in military coups.
Quoting the report of a study of incidences of electoral violence in the country between 2006 and 2014, Ogunyemi decried the high figure of 3,934 cases across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). He described the Fourth Republic, which started in 1999, as the most violent in the history of the country with high rate of political murders and assassinations.
He, therefore, tasked journalists to target the activities of those he called merchants of political violence in their reportage as part of the ways to end or mitigate electoral violence. The scholar listed those in these groups to include godfathers, members of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Almajiris in the North, and cultists in the South-South and so on.
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A director in the Centre for Digital Media and Research, Lagos State University, Dr Tunde Akanni, who is another resource person, took participants on a journey of how they can de-escalate tension through sensitive reporting. Akanni, who practised as a journalist for decades before the Civil Liberty Organisation to crusade right advocacy, listed ethno-religious, cultural and inter-communal conflicts areas journalists should handle delicately and responsibly in their reportage.
His offering for media practitioners is peace journalism which, he said, should look at all sides and give them voices as well as offer creative ideas for conflict resolution, development and peacemaking.
“Media should reckon with conflicts as specialized turf. Media reportage should de-emphasise winners against losers posturing, but focus more on early warning signals and post-conflict situations to support conflict mitigation,” he said.
Dr Akanni presented another paper on Factual Reporting of Elections and Contemporary Disruption. He bemoaned the danger posed by untrained journalists who latched onto to revolution in media interactivity to push out misleading information on blogs and online news portals. The former Features Editor of the now rested Concord Newspaper
He tasked the Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO) to step in and ensure quality assessment is initiated and made public as part of efforts to sanitise the polluted media space occasioned by the unchecked activities of bloggers who operate as journalists with no or scant regard for the ethics of the profession.
There were also panel discussions on human rights violation during elections; another paper on reporting ethnicity and religion in election campaign taken by the Managing Director of Authority Newspaper, Mr Madu Onuorah; as well as a group discussion of class tasks by the participants drawn from across media houses.
The two-day seminar did not end without a session entitled Personal Security of Journalists during Elections handled by the Peace and Conflict Management Officer from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), Hammed Abodurin.
Abodunrin, who held the class spellbound, jolted them when he declared that the best security form is personal security. “The best form of security is the one you provide for yourself. In fact, research has shown that the presence of security operatives in their large number in any place is a sign of high level of threats in that area.”
He gave a few techniques on how journalists can forge a robust working relationship with security personnel during and after election duties. “Ask who can I talk to and not who is the boss here? If you know his rank, call him by the rank. It makes him more cautious and courteous. Compliment his dress and encourage him. Don’t teach him his job. Don’t brag about calling his oga; he may quickly do what he can before his oga comes,” he advises.
Participants departed at the end of the seminar, fired up with the zeal to put the skills and training into use in their reportage before, during and after the elections. They were full of praise to the KAS for the seminar, asking the foundation to make it a regular exercise.