By Dele Sobowale
This article could have been titled Obama and Media Executioners Vs Farouk and Nigeria and it will still be appropriate. But, the selection of the title was based on the need to come quickly to the conclusion before providing the supporting evidence.

It is increasingly clear that the matter of Farouk Abdulmutallab has been concluded by most of our media commentators based on the “facts” provided by CNN, SKY NEWS, the rest of the Western media, whom we worship, and now, President Obama. After all, Obama is the first African to become president in the USA and so he cannot be unfair to a fellow African.

And at any rate, the disturbances in Bauchi and Borno states have proved conclusively that any Muslim brother caught and accused of terrorism abroad must indeed be guilty of terrorism. We have also been informed that Nigerians should hang their heads in shame because of Farouk and the nation’s re-branding efforts should be halted on account of this calamity.

Some of our own home-based media executioners don’t even know the difference between Northwest Airlines and Delta Airlines; neither do they know, exactly, where and when Farouk tied the explosives to his private part. They just assumed it must be Nigeria and it is the Nigerian airport authorities who must be blamed for the lapse.

We must not forget that they have taken it for granted that since Farouk visited Yemen, it was there that he was indoctrinated and armed with the explosives. Finally they have accepted the allegation that the explosive Farouk was carrying was powerful enough to blow off the plane. For all these, the guy deserves to be executed.

Very neat, very plausible but in the end a whole load of horse manure masquerading as informed media commentary.  As for me, even if all those allegations are true, they have not answered the question: what is the motive? Why should a Nigerian citizen, who stands to inherit millions of dollars, and live on easy street for the rest of his life, want to kill himself (because that is all that can be proved at this point) for the benefit of al-Qaeda? And by the way, who is Osama bin Laden?

Who trained him and turned him into the efficient monster that the US and the West claim that he is? At what point did he become a terrorist? Was he a terrorist when he was helping the CIA to bomb their enemies or after he turned coat? But those are matters for another time.

The urgent business on hand is to ensure that Farouk is not executed by the USA. In that regard there is an urgent need to set up a Save Farouk Committee which will take all necessary measures to ensure that the young man is not executed as a terrorist but returned to Nigeria to be rehabilitated.

To start with, our local media assassins, who, right from the first broadcast by CNN calling Farouk a terrorist, failed the first test of good journalism, although I am not a journalist. But, I keep always in my mind the words of Malvin Kalb who wrote as follows.

“A journalist should be pursuing a fair rendition of truth without regard to popular moods; the journalist should not be swayed by public opinion, only by the pursuit of truth, as close as he or she can get to it”. (Vanguard Book of Quotations, p. 109).

If you have a copy of the book of quotations you will also see the derogatory remarks by Julien Benda, 1857-1952, who exclaimed that, “Journalists say a thing they know isn’t true in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough, it will be true”.

With regard to the matter of Farouk, Nigerian journalists, by and large, had almost vindicated Benda. Words like terrorist, evil, murderer, bomber had been hauled at the fellow. One even said he strapped the bomb to his body in order to fool the immigration officers in Detroit; that was the Detroit the plane would not have reached if it had gone up in flames.

So much nonsense was written –each one trying to outdo the others in pandering to US opinion that there was indeed a Nigerian terrorist. And what was the evidence? It amounted, at first, to “CNN said it” –as if CNN is a court of law and not just another media organisation like Guardian, Punch, Nation, Sun, etc.

Since when has it been good journalism to accept the verdict of another media house as gospel and for our commentators go to work to parrot their “mentors”?

Certainly, none had interviewed Farouk; all they know, or pretend to know about him, had come from the US  and Western security services –the same people who told the whole world a bloody lie, that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, WMD, before going to pulverize Iraq in the greatest terrorist act of this new millennium so far.

Meanwhile, they have ignored, or did not wait, for other facts that could change their minds. Those imbued with the herd mentality don’t always want to be “confused by inconvenient facts”. But, let me provide a few, which our media executioners missed.

A CIA official, in the same Punch story from where the Obama statement was lifted had this to say. “While this is the season for second-guessing and finger-pointing, I have not seen anything from the meeting in Abuja including the cable that suddenly would have skyrocketed Abdulmutallab to the no-fly list.

You had a young man who was becoming increasingly pious and was turning his back on his family’s wealthy life-style. That alone neither makes him St. Francis nor a dead-eyed killer”. And he is not as far as I am concerned.

Another story in the Tribune, on January 4, 2010 made very interesting reading. According to the story, “British Intelligence officials had defended their decision not to flag Abdulmutallab as a possible terrorism risk, saying he was one of many youths who mixed with extremists but who were not themselves thought to be involved in plotting or supporting terrorism”.

So there; where then is the support for all that venom that has been poured on Farouk, his father, Nigeria’s Immigration, and indeed our country, Nigeria? The question is: who is Farouk who must be saved at all costs?