Emeka Izeze, former Managing Director of the Guardian, speaks of his disappointment with Yusuf Mohammed
Newswatchplus: Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999. Nearly 25 years later, how would you assess democracy in the country?
Izeze: Well as a system that allows more freedom I can say that it has been a fairly good journey for the country. Now we are voting, or so we think. People are not being arrested and hauled into prison as the military were doing. People are not getting killed for holding political views as it used to be in the dark days of military rule. Not all through the military rule. Actually, towards the end of military rule. If you compare now with then, you would say things are better. But have we practised the democracy as it should be practised? Absolutely not. I think that we adopted a system and the people operating it either have absolutely no idea of how democracy is. Or they simply accept it their way to subvert the democratic system of governance. Because everywhere you look, you see people who call themselves democrats who don’t have the credentials of democrats. They don’t have the disposition of democrats. People who don’t have the stomach for criticism. Democracy thrives on disagreement. Sometimes very violent disagreement. People disagree on matters of principle not out of hatred or malice. But even if you have to disagree because the other person seems to be completely set in destroying things, then you are also permitted to disagree maliciously. And democracy thrives on such.
Secondly, the people running these things don’t seem to understand that democracy means service. When you elect someone to the state house of assembly or you elect someone to the national assembly, or as governor or president, that automatically makes him the servant of the people. He is not their master. I don’t think our people understand that. It might well be a carry-over from the colonial era when the rulers were seen as the overlords. Everybody worshipped them. And the people who took over from them may have started practising democracy but they don’t have those characteristics or are not willing nor incapable of expressing those characteristics in their activities. So somebody gets elected. And it is only in Nigeria that you will see that the first thing people do is to congratulate him and throw a party to celebrate his election or appointment into political office. Whereas when you are appointed into office, you are appointed to render service. Has democracy really delivered on those things? Absolutely not. I think we have quite some way to go.
Newswatchplus: You have answered the second question on the list. I wanted to ask if it has delivered good governance.
Izeze: I can add to that by saying good governance is not just entire habit of going to vote every four years or people saying ‘’I was elected to be your governor, I was elected to be your senator, rep or president. Good governance is that you aggregate the aspirations of the people and attempt to provide solutions to them as humanly possible as you can. We know that as human beings we may not be able to solve all problems. But when people see that number one, what you are driving at is what the aspiration really translates into. And they see you doing it. The people begin to say this man or this woman is really representing us well. That’s why the leaders in those days; we were young then but we read about them. We met some at the tail end of their lives. That’s why they were revered. People like Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Mallam Aminu Kano, Sardauna of Sokoto. Please tell me when did you hear of Sardauna of Sokoto’s son roaming around Nigeria asking for contracts? When did you hear of Chief Awolowo’s son going to governors and asking for contracts because my father is this? When did you hear of Zik’s son doing that? I don’t want to talk about Mallam Aminu Kano because he was the best of the lot.
Newswatchplus: Those names you mentioned: do you think the incentive is still there for people to aspire to be like how they were back then?
Izeze: Look! The incentive is still there. The problem is that our value system has been corrupted. If you go to any local Nigerian setting today, they still treat thieves as thieves. Even when they collect money from you. Even when you give them money and they accept, they still consider you to be a thief. They probably collected this money from you and say ‘’he stole this money from us’’ or we don’t have alternative. The value system has not changed. What has changed are those who should have been the purveyors of those values nationally. So when a man gets to become a senator, member of the house or governor, he thinks of what he is getting out of it, not what he is putting in. And he begins to operate as a lord. Anybody who disagrees with him would be driven out of the state or killed. Sometimes if you are from some very unfortunate states, they go to the extent of burning people and their houses. At other times they go and destroy a man’s house overnight. These are things that Nigerian leaders have done and are still doing.
The people we have now believe in nothing. Whether it is religion. The Christians among them behave like they don’t know God. The Muslims among them behave like they don’t know God. Those who don’t belong to any religion also behave like they don’t know God. And all of them know where they meet. They don’t meet on the table of lofty ideas or values. No debates or discussions on how to make Nigeria better. They meet when there’ something to share. Also sometimes, particularly in the current dispensation, you find that whether they belong to this political party or that political party, they agree on one thing. It is what they are going to get from the system.
People who want to lead must have vision, vision that leads to development. It is not about building borehole. Sometimes they even play tricks on Nigerians. When the man who comes to launch it leaves, the tap stops running. We have to begin to interrogate governance better. There was a period when there wasn’t electricity in many parts of the country when those men of integrity were in charge. But look at what Sardauna did in the North. Look at the people who were deliberately educated to run the region. The closest people to him were even Christians. He took Christians and Muslims. He took people from all parts of the North. That’s the way things were working then.
Let’s talk of Awo who was such a great thinker and philosopher who believed that once you educate Nigerians, you will go beyond the sky. Give them education.
Newswatchplus: Now let’s talk about your constituency: the media. In your view, how have journalists performed so far?
Izeze: Not good. Journalists aren’t interrogating the system. I don’t think it has always been like this. I doubt it very much. As management scientists say, you step out of the room and step on to the corridor. From the corridor you are looking back into the room, and what you see would tell you how things really are. And frankly speaking, I don’t think we have done a good job. I think I should be able to make such statements about our profession. This is the only thing I have done in my life. I never did any other thing. Even when all the governments were grabbing me to come and be part of government I said I have no interest in joining. As democracy was setting in, I was being appointed MD/Editor of the newspaper. And the man at the helm of affairs then said you must come. I disagreed. That’s the highest level of my career. I wouldn’t abandon it for four years. I ended up being MD/Editor in chief for almost 17 years.
Newswatchplus: Was it the mentality at the time? Would you have done something different today?
Izeze: No! I wouldn’t have done something differently. Even now. It’s not momentary thing.
Looking back I can say we are in a bad shape. We didn’t interrogate the leaders who governed us since 1999. People now see us (journalists) as partisan and it becomes very difficult for them to take us seriously. The politicians know that the best way to keep their mouth shut is to compromise them. The banks started doing that. They started organizing journalists and telling them that you are association of this and that. Journalists saw it as an industry. Before they do anything, they go and sit in front of one bank MD or chairman. Some were classmates of those bank MDs. They were brighter in class than those bank MDs. And the man talks down on journalist. And then they give you a little money and you must stand there and listen to them address you. They started destroying our profession in piecemeal. Finally it has gotten to a point where the people in the profession are behaving like politicians. They are looking for what they are getting out, not what they are giving. There is nothing that drives most of the people in today’s journalism. The journalism of old, something drove them.
Newswatchplus: What happened to that culture?
Izeze: Character is what is missing. I believe it can be revived. When you have an organization, you may have people who aren’t competent but they have character. You can teach them competence, if you find that they are failing in this area, you can shift them to the other area. But when you have someone without character, you can’t teach him that. He may be a competent person but a competent crook. A competent crook is even more dangerous to you than an incompetent crook.
People must understand that in this job you must be driven. You want to change this place to a better place. These days nobody thinks like that in the media. So when people are getting elected, even some journalists go around getting close to politicians hoping they would get a job. Whereas those politicians were offering those jobs and we were turning them down. Instead of going to them, character would make people recommend you. That’s what our people on that job don’t know. You can become a president of Nigeria as a journalist. I actually believe a journalist can do a better job of governing Nigeria. I’m not talking about the journalists who go about asking for money. It’s so bad that these days, journalists go about asking money from bishops and imams when they cover press conference.
Newswatchplus: When we look at the glorious days of journalism in Nigeria, it was during the military era when there was less freedom. Today, we are in a democracy. And from all you have said, journalists are not as daring as they were back then. What do you think is the problem?
Izeze: Why were journalists able to function under the military and not able to function well in a democratic setting?
I have said this before. Journalists all over the world see themselves as the only people capable of changing the world. Or at least part of the people capable of changing the world. Let me tell you what happens in civilised societies. In places like Japan, USA and England. The top three places the best graduates go into the military, civil service and media. This is because this tripod holds the society. They didn’t call you the fourth estate of the realm for nothing. You are old enough to know what transpired in Rwanda where a broadcast by a radio station led to the death of about three million people. They know what can happen when the media is managed wrongly. The media grew from the coffee shop. The coffee shop was a place where intellectuals went to debate issues and argue. That’s how the media developed into what we have now as modern media. What happened is that we lost our way. We stopped thinking about who we are and what we are capable of doing. Without us, the military would have probably remained in power longer than they did. It is not the politicians, not the civilians and not the human rights advocates. There were magazines published in this town towards the end of military rule: they were not operating from their offices. They would write and take to printers who were willing to print for them, load it and distribute from the boot of their cars. And they were selling hundreds of thousands of copies in this same country. The military would be looking for them via their address but wouldn’t see anyone. Those journalists concluded that these people are destroying Nigeria and we are ready to run any risk to change it. Soldiers were chased away but those who took over from them are not locking people up anymore. They aren’t jailing people. They aren’t shooting people. They aren’t making draconian laws sometimes. But the society is worse today than it was then, when these people were around. We can’t say for certain that anyone trusts the elections we have in Nigeria today. If there’s anybody you can say trusts our electoral system 100%, show me the person. We can’t say that any of the leaders we have today in Nigeria have the support of all Nigerians across board. We don’t have that anymore. We can’t say for certain that the people who have governed us have delivered on their promises to Nigerians. Many of them didn’t even promise anything.
They didn’t promise because you journalists of today didn’t ask questions of them. Don’t let them ride roughshod over you and tell you this is what you are going to do.
Some of them are still public intellectuals today. But they were journalists. They were not inferior to the military men. Did you hear of any of them being made a minister? Which governor had the courage to say I want to make you a minister so you work for me? Governors were courting everyone.
We ran a story on a military governor. I won’t tell his name but I would tell you the story. He and I are still friends today. We had the challenge that my one of my reporters when I was Editor of The Guardian on Sunday wrote a story which was true. And that military administrator had moved from that state to another state. And he was a friend of our publisher, a friend of our executive editor, Dr. Macebuh. A fried of all our big men. But I didn’t give a hoot. All I knew was I was doing my job. And as editor I had the final say. So we ran the story. The man came and started raising hell. When he started raising hell, my people said that boy must have done a bad story. I said no, that story is correct. Your friend knows the story is correct. They said no, for what this reporter has done you should fire him. That’s when you can say to the publisher, no sir I can’t fire him. I remember I was editor of The Guardian Sunday weekly. I said no sir I can’t fire him.
I asked him to give me permission to handle it. He said sure, how do you plan to do it? Again, the people who ran the media at that time were so urbane and open-minded and trusted professionalism that they gave you the free hand to it. I said I want to see the governor myself. He said you? The governor is angry. The impression they had was that I was going there to apologise to the governor. I got into the aircraft and flew to his state. Before I arrived he had informed them I was coming. All his commissioners were bringing things. The soldiers ushered me in. And as soon as he saw me, he left his desk and came to relax with me on the couch. That story that I published never came up in our discussion. After that we became friends. He saw someone willing to take a risk. What I ended up doing was converting him to our position. He never converted me to their position.
Let me tell you something. Alex Ibru, my chairman then, is dead. I was the editor of Sunday, Daily, and became editor in chief/managing director. I actually became editor in 1987. Not once did Alex Ibru bring a story to me to say put it in the paper. Never. In fact, if he hears that anyone, including his family members are getting too close to the journalists, he stopped it. He said he doesn’t want his photograph published in this newspaper. There are people with character in this country. Nigeria wasn’t always like this. He said I don’t want my photo published in The Guardian. I don’t want news about me published in The Guardian. We had to convince him that your family have businesses. If they are doing things, we can’t blank them out. He said ‘’fine cover them but cover them like everyone else.’’ The man protected and defended the newspaper almost to a fault. He said this newspaper is the voice of the voiceless and the needy. Throughout my time at The Guardian, not once did Alex Ibru give me a story to publish. Not once! The man is dead. So I’m not saying this to boost his ego. He was a wonderful newspaper man. He understood the power of the newspaper. He understood that when a newspaper is well run, it can actually be powerful and effective. That’s what the people running the media today don’t know. They believe it is by making money that you become powerful and effective. No. it’s by doing the real job that you become powerful and effective. I was able to do that because that was the culture I met on ground. I worked under the best editors. The likes of Femi Kusa and Lade Bonuola who was our first editor in The Guardian. He came from Daily Times. Femi Kusa who succeeded him as editor, was first class. Debo Adesina, who succeeded me, was first class.
I’m just saying that they knew the job and did it very well. I can say the same of all the people who ran Newswatch. All the people who ran National Concord at some point. All the people who were running organizations like Punch and Tribune. They were organizations that were beautifully run that even if you want to do a coup in Nigeria, you have to talk to those journalists. If not, they would kill the coup.
Newswatchplus: When you were giving examples earlier, you mentioned America. Till date they still talk about the January 6 Capitol attack which left five people dead. In Nigeria, we have had far worse aftermaths of elections. For instance, in 2011, over 800 people were killed according to the Human Rights Watch. No one seems to be talking about it anymore. Do you think journalists need to keep reminding the electorate about such issues in order to bring about change in how we conduct our future elections?
Izeze: Absolutely! Look we had a nice interregnum under the last administration of President Buhari. When some state security people barricaded the National Assembly, the president was away and the vice president (Yemi Osinbajo) was serving. The vice president for that reason sacked the head of that institution. That is the way Nigeria used to be. And did heaven fall? The vice president sacked that man and said whether you approve it or not, it happened under your watch. Someone must account for it. Today, people would say that was one of the brightest periods. People were surprised that the Villa could act that quickly and decisively. Nigeria was going to collapse and they saw the hand writing. They knew if they didn’t act fast, one day it could be their turn.
After that, there was no repeat of that. The point is that journalists today don’t even see the opportunities that are created by events to push the limits. Let’s test the limit. How far can we push freedom? Why do you cede your freedom so quickly? Why don’t you decide to do something? Look we have people who call themselves elected representatives of the people at all levels and they are behaving badly. Why shouldn’t the media call them to order? There was a case in court. And they say to you that when a case is in court, you should not do this or that. This case was in Supreme Court. A case of Federal Government vs Tam David West. We decided that The Guardian should do an editorial on it. An editorial to say, we want to push the limit of freedom. What is happening here is shenanigan that we didn’t need. And we wrote the editorial and published it in The Guardian. When the judgement came, it was reading almost like The Guardian editorial because they saw our reasoning. Another time they had census in 1991. And the census was bad. It wasn’t a real census. So The Guardian decided to destroy the census because it’s a bad advertisement of a country like Nigeria. These days, people allow so many bad advertisement to go unreported. So we did an editorial. The editorial said if you are using an inaccurate variable to solve an equation, you would get a consistent answer every time you use it. But the answer is wrong because the variable is wrong. We said every census we have had, the only thing they do is to add 3%, so our population was always growing at 3%. We said mathematically it’s impossible. That’s what happened in the last election. If you check how the votes were going, it’s exactly the same. It is impossible humanly speaking, not to talk of mathematically speaking. We wrote that it’s impossible for the population to be rising by 3% every time you do census. You know, the man everybody calls ‘cabal’ in Buhari’s government used to be MD of New Nigerian newspaper. Mallam Mamman Daura. This was written under the military. Imagine writing editorial that the military conducted. We normally have military media interaction. And this interactive session was taking place at Lake Hotel in Kano. He was there and took up a copy of The Guardian editorial. He said at that time, I don’t know what has happened to the media. This is my idea of a newspaper editorial. He raised it up. He said you don’t have to agree with the conclusion or opinion expressed. But you look at it and say this is how an editorial should be. And that was my introduction to Mallam Mamma Daura. And from that moment, whatever happened thereafter, I didn’t care, because I saw that this was an honest man practicing journalism. He said this thing that they have said here should shock you to think. Newspapers don’t make anybody think anymore. We are just rolling with the trends, with the events. We chronicle one today and we run away. We don’t remind people like the American journalists keep reminding Americans about what Trump’s supporters did on January 6. We don’t even remember whether anything happened. We don’t mark the event. Left to the media, October 2020 would have been forgotten and that’s just three years ago. But the people who were involved, have now taken the reigns of the media. By failing to do our job, we are ceding some of our influence to other segments of society. The young people, the Non-Governmental Organizations: we are beginning to cede our influence to them.
In the past, they never did anything without coming to us. And I can tell you when Attahiru Jega was ASUU President he was a regular at The Guardian. Each time there was going be an issue, he knew that I need to go to The Guardian to explain it to them, so I can gain their support. That’s a leadership trait that the people governing now don’t have anymore. Jega today, is saying we have to do something about our electoral system. It’s like a man who realises that that system is beyond all of us as individuals. When the media holds its turf, it would be difficult for any politician to get away with murder as they are doing.
We just talked about people going to buy SUV for 160 million. Is it the best time to buy the SUV? In the past, the media would have published an expose on that contract. Who got the contract? How much is it worth? Where are they getting the vehicle from? What kind of vehicle are they getting? What is the vehicle selling for in other jurisdiction? Why is our own selling for 160 million in Nigeria? And the story would be in the papers. When you publish a story like that, people in the National Assembly would be afraid to touch the motor. Two, you then blast the editorial that says return those cars. It is unconscionable. At a time you are asking Nigerians to tighten their belts this is what you are sharing.
Their excuse is that they met the supplementary budget. In the old days, we would go through the supplementary budget. We have experts who know about budgeting. Sit down and interpret it for us. We run it first as a story, and follow it up with editorial. And say withdraw this supplementary budget.
If one or two newspapers had done it, they would have withdrawn it. That’s what Newswatch and others did back then. These days, we have TV, Radio, online, and newspapers. We have more outlets now, yet we are wielding less influence in the polity. And so long as we are not wielding enough influence, this polity will go down. And Nigeria will be the worse for it. The thing to do is to find how you would begin to wield the real influence again and for the country to get better.
Newswatchplus: To wrap up this interview, what do you think is the way forward?
Izeze: The way forward is for the politicians to recognise that our country is on the wrong track. And when you are going on the wrong track, you have to turn back, or you are going to crash. We can’t continue business as usual. Something is going to give.
It may not give in the next one or two years but eventually, it will give. The rot we are coping with now did not start in one day. And that’s the issue. Those governing must recognise that if they continue to hijack the will of the people, or to ignore the will of the people as reflected in their votes, this country is going to get into serious trouble. A time will come when the people will lose interest in the voting system. We are starting to see it now. If you go from 1999 to now, every election cycle we’ve had, fewer people are now being recorded and voting. Look at the number of people that voted in the last election. The lowest we have had. It could get even worse if they don’t change direction. When people lose confidence in the system, they will vote with their feet. They will stay away from the polling centre and every other thing government is doing. And governance becomes more difficult if the people don’t see you as their leader. They won’t listen to everything you are asking them to do. Most of the things they do would be passive protest without necessarily going on the street. And you have to use highhandedness to bend their heads to act. And when you do that you cease to become a democracy. You become a totalitarian state. That is even the better option. The worse is that the entire thing would collapse. And when the entire thing collapses, what does that do to Nigeria? Every election cycle even makes it less attractive than the previous ones.
Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had character but he didn’t live long. He had a sense to say that ‘’the election that brought me wasn’t not good. I’m going to do something about electoral; system.’’ He started but didn’t finish. If he had been alive, he would have changed the electoral system. Umaru was the kind of guy who wouldn’t mind losing election like Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan conceded to Buhari even before the result was announced. If you know how powerful a Nigerian president is. Hmm! He has the power in his hands. He can decide to cancel the election if he wants. But he said no. And he said something that has now become legendary: ‘’my ambition is not worth the drop of one Nigerian.’’ That’s like Yar’Adua saying ‘’the system that brought me is grossly flawed, I’ll do something about it.’’
We need leaders to start talking like that. When you speak like that, you give Nigerians hope. As a leader say for the next four years, I won’t travel outside the country. Any meeting they call me, I am going to send a representative. I won’t go. No Nigerian representatives would go. Our ambassadors there will represent us because I have a job to do here. How do I do this job? I’m going to go around this country. I want to take three to four months crisscrossing Nigeria and holding town hall meetings. But they won’t do it because it’s hard work. Asking Nigerians what do you want us to do in this and that area? Listen to Nigerians and build a new consensus on what this country needs at this time.
Ojukwu told me something about the civil war in an interview I had with him. He said a time comes when the leader ceases to lead to tell the people what they ought to do and begin to assemble the aspirations and manage it. We are actually at that level. Obama gave it a clever term. He said that is leading from behind. A time comes when a leader starts to lead from behind. We need our leaders to introspect. If I’m to advise them now, I would say: considering the division in the country, we have ethnic division, tribal division, we now have demographic division. The division is increasing by the day. The number of young Nigerians that are running away from here.
I was talking to one of them (a doctor) not knowing he was resuming work in the UK. And I said I hope you are not going? And he asked ‘’what is here for me?’’ He said ‘’take it from me. We are going out but we will come back. And when we come back, we will build this country.’’
When you find young men talking with such firmness, the Nigeria they will rebuild, will be a Nigeria where many of the people now, if they don’t throw them into jail, they are going to shoot some of them. They will be tried and convicted. They will just pass a law that says if you did this crime it is capital punishment. They have seen it done in the countries they are going.
We don’t need that to happen. This is the time for our elected officials to sit down and think. Can they have a national conference of political parties? Can they sit down and forge a new consensus for the country? Can they sit down and say we are the ones in charge but this country can run better.
Can they sit down and talk about the electoral system and how to change it. If they don’t sit down to discuss these things, people outside would discuss behind their backs. And eventually it will come to boiling point and these people won’t be able to handle it. Politicians, this time, should not think they can go it alone because it’s clear now that the problems are overwhelming. No one group can go it alone. What you need is to forge a new national consensus. Develop a new national narrative. Chart a new national cause. And you can’t do it as a group, you can only do it as Nigerians.
For the people in our profession (journalism) get back to basic. Your job is to watch what people are doing. We have been co-opted into the evil things going on in the society, We must extricate ourselves from it. Journalists must deliberately extricate themselves from it. What we are going to be doing as Ombudsman as much as we can is to see how we are going to extricate journalists from where they have roped themselves. Nobody goes into journalism to become a multimillionaire. If you are looking to become a multi-millionaire, you can go to apply in some other places or go and do something else. In journalism, you are looking to make society better. It so happens that the assignment of making society better, doesn’t make you always rich. But it makes you comfortable enough to stand. We are not looking for you to be competing in terms of wealth, the number of houses you have as the other people. Number of cars or wives as the other people. That’s not journalism. Journalists are driven by ideas that don’t seem to make any sense to the rest of society until journalists bring it out. Those ideas are the ideas that build the society. Ideas of the public good. Of being the voice of the voiceless. Of defending the small man. Of giving vent to the people’s views. The idea of looking at Nigeria as a bigger structure than it is now. Looking at how Nigeria can get better. The only people who can hold politicians accountable are the journalist. And if the journalist fail, you can bet the politicians would get worse. And if they get worse, the country would get worse and it becomes more inhabitable for all of us. And if we can’t live here, where else are we going to live?
