By Bisi Lawrence

It is a brand new year, and all its problems—which we fondly refer to as challenges—lie in wait for us. Each year has its own brand, but not often are the forebodings of a year so brightly etched on the distant horizon as we can appreciate in the beginning of the year 2015. Within the normal forebodings that an election year generates are also the issues of insurgences and the confusion they breed. We also hear of “wars and rumours of war” in an environment made even the spikier by messages from our leaders, both spiritual and temporal, drenched with appeals for peace.

Jonathan and Buhari

Among the sources of these admonitions, advice and plain entreaties are the two contestants in the presidential election, President Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP, the incumbent, and a former Military Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari. The president tries to come across forcefully as a man of peace by stating, over and over again, that no political office is worth the shedding of one drop of blood of a Nigerian.

But can he really vouch for his kinsmen of the South-south some of who are on record as vowing that there would be bloodshed if he lost the election? Some of them are even connected with news of the purchase of some military materiel. Such equipment is not generally acquired for peacetime deployment except, of course, as weapons for maintaining law and order. That, as a matter fact, was the basis of the explanation forwarded for the acquisition of some naval boats recently. We were still left with some discomfort after the somewhat glib explanation. But, at least, there was an explanation.

But President Goodluck Jonathan has also warned that, if he was returned into office with this election, he was going to “step on some toes”. That leaves us in cold comfort as members of the press. The president has ridden one hobby-horse through this term of office, and that is his ire at being so consistently criticised. In fact, he believes that no former head of state has been put through the mill by the press as he has. And, if the truth be told, he may just be right. What makes it more poignant is that deserved credit has not perhaps been forthcoming to equipoise the points of disapproval.

Well, are we admitting here that the press could have been slightly more fair to the president? Where in the world has a free press, the watchdog of the people, where has the press been adjudged very fair to officialdom? In the United States? In the United Kingdom? Or in the Philippines? Definitely not in Australia or Canada—countries which all have a loud claim to a free press. But the press has sensitive toes, so anyone in power had better tread softly.

We have no real indication that President Jonathan will have a set-to with the media, should he come back into Aso Rock, anyway. But journalists have a way of trying to weigh all sides, and that is why some of the misunderstanding arises. If one does not see an issue from the same standpoint with the official view, the fat sometimes hits the fire. That, it would appear was how the young professionals, now known as the “Aljazeera Three” got into trouble. The three journalists have now spent a year in an Egyptian prison because they refused to lend a twist to events they were reporting in the highly explosive political drama which began to play out immediately after the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood from power.

It is not on record that their activities were in anyway supportive of the position of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had dropped into the position of the opposition, but was also declared illegal to boot. Rallies were mounted to the fury of the government which sought to repress the demonstrations with all force. Gunshots featured profusely and lives were lost. The arrest of the three members of the reputable television network excited no feverish emotion until December 29, last year when they were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Greste and Mohammed were sentenced to seven years each, but Baher got an additional three years for being found in possession of an empty shell which he had picked off the ground during the rally.

World-wide shock first greeted the judgment, and then appeals and protests took over, all to no avail. World leaders, including President Barack Obama, joined the plea, but the journalists’ case was not reviewed, though an appeal is in the offing. The head of the Egyptian government declared that he would not “interfere with the judiciary”, though he could free the journalists on the prerogative of mercy which he as the president could exercise. However, demonstrations of support for the Aljazeera Three continue unabated though the Egyptian authorities refuse to budge.

The level of support from Nigeria has been rather low. Aljazeera is not a total stranger to Nigeria. The network has even given an award for professional proficiency to one or two of our own journalists. It is, therefore, somewhat disheartening that we have shown so little by way of solidarity with the network in its time of need. It could be our turn next. As one of the embattled journalists has pointed out, journalists are no “longer on the frontlines; they are e frontlines.”

And, as a matter of current history, it does happen here too. The perpetrator of one of the really shocking cases is the other man now looking forward to rule the nation, as he once did as a military head of state. General Muhammadu Buhari took over the administration of this country In the era of “coups” when it was fashionable for members of the armed forces to suddenly take control of the administrative powers of their countries, at gunpoint.

Journalists were beginning to acclimatize to the environment of deprivation which the rule of the jackboot imposed on each section of the populace who were identified under the generic term of “bloody civilians”, when Buhari mounted the saddle. And hardly had he found his seat than he declared, for the benefit of all and sundry, that he was going to “tamper” with the press. And so he did!

For some flimsy excuse, he quickly slammed prison doors on three journalists from different establishments. We were all amazed, and dumbfounded, and astounded, and simply bowled over. Many of us are yet to recover from the general shock of that event. There is hardly any situation so benumbing to a journalist, the watchdog of the freedom of the populace, to remain capriciously deprived of his own.

This remains a source of personal anxiety for me. There are other important areas of government that should occupy our attention before a national election—power, education, transportation, health, etc—and they can be arranged in any order of priority, depending on one’s own perception of the importance attached to them by the immediate circumstances or concern. But for me, it is freedom first, and then those other things can be added to human rights and desires.

And so, when it comes to making up my mind about for whom I shall cast my vote in another two months, the question I shall be asking myself is not just who can provide electricity, or construct better roads, or make the agriculture boom, but who would do all that is “needful” under all those categories, but also grant me the right to enjoy that inalienable right—freedom!

Will you Jonathan? Or can you Buhari?

Time out.