By Muyiwa Adetiba

The Sunday Punch should be 50 this year. It means anybody who had any role to play in the newsroom at its birth or was around within its first year would today be at least fifty years in journalism. I was in the latter group. It makes me feel ancient to say I have spent half a century around news and newspapering already. But it is what it is as they say. Where did the years go? That is a story for another day. For now, I will just say it has been a jolly ride with screams of joy as I scaled some heights and of despair as I plunged some depths.

The Punch that witnessed Nigeria’s first Presidential election was a young but matured newspaper. The people who manned the newsroom and managed the paper at the time came from different ethnic backgrounds and religions. They naturally had their loyalties and preferences among the emerging personalities and parties. The Chairman came from a strong political family in Ibadan. He had his preferences. In another time and place, an Editor who came from the North and a Political Editor from the East with different political preferences would have run into problems. Not at the Punch of the 70s. Instead, what these preferences did was to give the paper a balanced outlook. It helped that interviews and quotes were copiously used in the place of hearsay; it helped that fairness and objectivity coursed through the stories; it helped that we had a Managing Editor who allowed us freedom of our conviction but not of irresponsibility. He did not suffer fools gladly. What emerged was a paper that was bold, courageous but credible. And not just The Punch. Most newspapers of the time, including Government owned ones strove for credibility. But beyond credibility, no media practitioner of my generation wanted to heat up the polity unnecessarily. I cringe these days when I see how news is handled in some newspapers, especially online ones where the drive is more for clicks than for credibility. I want to plug my ears and cover my face when some journalists on the electronic media make assertions which are not fact-checked and play up opinion as news. These are tough to take when you are old school.

But the social media is a different ball-game. It is the place where everybody is a journalist, trained or not. It is a place where the writer is the Editor and the Publisher; where there is no control let alone accountability. Yet, there is no doubt that the social media played a significant role in shaping the narrative for the 2023 elections. Each time I am confronted with a ‘news item’ in the social media, I think of Jack Nicklaus, the legendary golf player who said of the Tiger Woods generation ‘they play the type of golf with which I am unfamiliar’. In a similar way, although in a negative sense this time, the social media practices the type of journalism with which I am unfamiliar. Facts are stretched when not out rightly manufactured; comments are abridged and distorted; incidents from the past are made to look new; scenes are created for impact; prominent names are attached to stories they know nothing about; all to suit a particular narrative or to create fear and panic. The worst thing about the social media is that those who create and post incendiary items are not accosted. In fact, many are faceless. A city can literally be put on fire and the perpetrators would get away with it. Mass murders can literally be committed through incendiary posts and the perpetrators would get away with it. It is worse when those who should be more discerning repost them using ‘posted as received’ as an alibi. This is not freedom of the media. It is the road to anarchy and it is frightening.

Thanks to the social media, voices that would otherwise have been muted are now heard loud and direct. In the past, inciting and divisive voices would have been better managed by the media. Pastors for example, who encourage people to vote for a person because of his religion are only encouraging Imams and Sheiks to do the same. This would have been muted in my time because it can only widen the religious cleavages in the country. In any case, Christians in government have not been proven to be better than Muslims or Animists in government. Many Pastors are themselves unworthy of emulation. Meanwhile, potholes and gullies do not recognize Christian drivers. Hospitals do not recognize Muslim patients. Voices that would also have been muted years ago were voices of dissent and sedition. They are loud and clear today in the media. Even before the full results had been announced, many are already calling for the cancellation of the elections. It was embarrassing to find a former Head of State who had supervised a worse election among them. A Statesman has become an activist. A voice for order has become a voice for disorder. There is no perfect election anywhere and this seemed an improvement on the previous ones judging from how the political juggernauts fell in areas they held sway. In any election as in any competitive endeavor, there will always be winners and losers. All losses are painful but many will accept the loss and move on to be better prepared for the next election, the next competition. Four years are not eternity. It is natural that some will be in denial, grasping at straws in their futile hope for something to happen to change the announced result – I once was when Argentina beat Nigeria at the World Cup. But a few, the Donald Trumps of this world, will not mind destroying the process and even the democratic fabric of the country simply because they have not had their way. They are already rearing their heads using the social media as a tool to garner dissenting voices. I have seen posts asking for people to rise up and resist ‘this rape of democracy’. Yet those posts are in themselves intolerant and against any democratic ethos. The casualties of violent protests can never be pre-determined. Many will be innocent but unfortunate bystanders. The infrastructures that will be destroyed belong to the commonwealth and we will all, innocent and guilty, suffer the consequences of destruction. We need to rise up and disengage them before they rally rabble rousers to their cause. I have seen posts that stopped short of suggesting insurrection; that the country can burn for all they care because they can’t have their way. America probably survived the January 6 insurrection because of its strong institutions. I don’t know if we would be that lucky with our compromised institutions and with all that had taken place before the elections through fuel and cash scarcity. The aggrieved need to calm down and follow the laws of the land before they take themselves and us, to a place of no return.