By Sam Omatseye
I received a message from a columnist well-known for his diatribes against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. The note reads in part: “As you know, I am not an APC or Tinubu partisan, but I squirm when I see truth being murdered unchallenged. The fake transcript is being bandied as belonging to Tinubu. I even learned that it was tendered at the election tribunal…As someone who lived and worked in the US, I am sure you know that the social security number in this so-called transcript doesn’t conform to the form of US social security numbers…That is the deadest giveaway that the transcript is fake. SSNs are typically written in this form:000-00-0000. But Tinubu’s putative social security number is 231-060-591. That’s a transparent fabrication. Plus, social security numbers are sensitive pieces of information that don’t appear on college transcripts.” He attached the copy of the so-called transcript to the message.
I placed a call to a prominent lawyer and Senior Advocate of Nigeria with the message, and he was amused. He even said there was no need to break a bone over that matter because President Tinubu never claimed he attended any college so named.
But the lack of traction of this basic disgrace in the media and even in the comedy circuits of our soul emphasizes two things. One, a reportorial deficit and juridical amnesia in today’s journalism. Two, it shows a sense of desperation of a so-called movement that is swimming blind in its deniability, its sense of seeing its death and saying it is alive.
So, it must clutch at every air draft to breathe and move and have its being. Its partisans are like the saying in the book of Revelations referring to the delusion of some believers who “have a reputation or name of being alive but you are dead.” Being dead is not easy to accept. Even some Roman emperors who lived on gold loathed to die on grass. One of them, Vespasian, exalted on his deathbed, “Blimey! I think I am becoming a god.” His brutal ways held no whiff of laughter. But the “great” Nero had more regard for himself as he expired. The man who entertained only himself while he performed to a crowd, said: “Truly an artist is about to perish.” He was the man who torched Christians and fiddled while Rome burned. Populism in the political sphere sometimes treats its heroes with cult-like deference. It even defines them as divine without refining them or even admitting their weirdness to themselves. In trying to clothe themselves as the third force, they end up as the third farce.
But the first observation is what bothers quite a few in society. That is, the tendentious reporting of the proceedings in the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal. One can see why some wanted everything to play out in public glare, and it makes sense why the judges did not grant it. A group wanted to turn judicial sobriety into a circus. In spite of that, the social media, with its cut-and-amplify mentality, has sullied the cyberspace.
No wonder the justices have warned the lawyers to shun social media gallery and desist from holding press conferences after every session as though justice comes from the rabble of the internet. Such lawyers, and they are SANs, still privilege noise over poise.
But reporters and their gatekeepers are either allowing this skewed picture out of spite or out of professional deficiency. The reporting has been largely one-sided, and gives a wrong impression to the public what the details are. Unless you are a curious person and discuss with those who attend the proceedings, you may not get a full picture of what petitioners have done and the level of rigour that characterizes the cross-examinations.
The so-called Southwest College transcript is only one. Some have skewed the reporting of the Chicago State story with headlines and slanted presentations as though there have been no countervailing background to the story in recent times.
There was little emphasis when some math experts were trying to caricature Chike Obi and pose as his reincarnation, and the details about what they said during cross examinations. Another so-called document, a lawyer who is a SAN, was not ashamed to say it was printed from the internet. The reporter is not expected to make verdicts. He is expected to say what he heard or saw. There is a danger in showing it as professionalism whereas it is appropriation. Rather than serve as penmen of the press, they come across as penned men under pressure. We are supposed to be guardians and not guard dogs.
The other time in our history where theatre surrounded the election tribunal was during the Awo vs Shagari court duel of 1979. It sounds comical today that Shagari was challenged in court. I had no electoral love for Shagari but I thought he won the polls. My father thought Awo won. He thought the Ikenne man was too good and too methodical for Nigeria not to lose That was sentiment. I said the fact showed otherwise. I did not, however, agree with the route Akinjide took to prove his point. I found Awo’s thesis, in my teenage mind, difficult to absorb.
But I enjoyed reading the newspaper reporting then. My father had a habit of reading the reports aloud in the sitting room. Sometimes he rose to his feet and offered a few chuckles for drama. He would read the Tribune and Daily Times, and I wondered whether he was advertising his gift of the garb or he was simply excited by the tremor of debate in the courts. This was because the reporters captured the details, nuances, colour and tenor of the proceedings. The reporters transplanted the reader into the court room. There was no cosplay.
We could hear the flourish of G.O. K. Ajayi, the methodical sobriety of Awo, the defiant brilliance of Akinjide, and I recall someone asking me to be a lawyer. I was rather admiring the reporters who brought the theatre to our home in cold print.
Ironically, the reporters of those days hardly had the honours of a university degree. They had an eagle eye for facts. Their editors too never saw university portals. We know many veterans today like Segun Osoba, Sam Amuka and even the recently deceased Peter Enahoro. They did not need a degree. They matured through passion for the craft. Many went to college and did short courses afterwards.
University degrees are good. But a man is a product of his passions. We need to see more of that in the reporting. Just as the reporting has shown such lacklustre propagation for excellence, so has some of our SANs. One of them was fined recently, and some judges wondered why some SANs were wasting the time of the court. Filthy lucre should not stain professionalism so starkly.
What we see on social media is what the theorists call selective exposure and selective retention. You see what you want to see and retain what you want. It is the reporter’s job to guard against such social prejudice. Rather than reflect, they select and amplify. It is bad for media and society.
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