The Dying Profession Of Journalism in Nigeria

The draft not getting to the craft

You begin to wonder what is happening to the journalism profession in Nigeria, with the many unfortunate events like badly filed reports that make no sense or serve no purpose than act as space fillers of incomprehensibility.

Then the Shibboleths of Nigerianese that have become the foundations of Nigerian English following none of the rules of common English grammar.

Where we are spared running the gauntlet of inscrutable English, it is verbosity that leaves you marooned as a castaway from context and reason as to why the writer deigned to put pen to paper.

Forget the fine art of fact-checking, proofreading or spellchecking and you end up with a slurry of a jumble of words produced by any fingered primate typing feverishly at a keyboard in the miraculous hope of producing a magnificent volume to upstage the works of Shakespeare.

Whimsical with the unethical

Then we move on to the ethical issues of journalism, where some are mercenaries for hire ready to plant a fabrication to favour a cause, a patron or some bias, many refusing to allow objectivity to get in the way of sensationalism as we have our focus diverted by the bold and screaming headlines of yellow journalism.

Plagiarism is rife, the lack of attribution, reference, acknowledgement or recognition of originality as the race for circulation and any other pursuit means everyone and anyone is trampled upon without any hope of an apology or restitution for the misuse of copyright or sources of material.

Which brings me to the most recent scramble to the nadir of this profession, the fictional construct of a story about human trafficking, supported and sponsored by heretofore reputable organisations, at least we have been deluded into thinking they had any semblance of integrity until now.

We’ve been had too many times

This made me post a comment on Facebook about the supposed investigative epaulets of Tobore Mit Ovuorie.

Blog - Pa Ikhide Unravels That Despicable Human Trafficking Yarn

“That girl would be the complete ruin of any semblance of journalism in Nigeria as newspapers exacerbate this continual fiction of every undercover story appearing to endanger her life.

She has found an emotional and sentimental switch on the Nigerian psyche, speak of endangered life, and we almost always lose the ability to reason and question as we begin to sympathise and empathise - we have been blackmailed into losing our rational minds.”

Indeed, she appears to have found what we as Nigerians are too susceptible to, our lack of curiosity in the face of consuming activity.

We’ve lost our bearings

Our senses stimulated by macabre, bizarre and atrocious stories, pictures and videos that drags our humanity into inurement to the sufferings of others as we feast on what passes for news when it is mostly gossip, rumour and uncorroborated events.

We race so well ahead of the truth and the facts that when they eventually catch up with us, the damage is done as we wait for the next heroin high of another sorry tale of life in Nigeria.

You then ask, who would rescue this noble profession of journalism from the dregs of reprehensible, lying and unscrupulous purveyors of the contemptible? Who?

Nigeria: The Court of Goodluck I - Special Advisers

Don’t waste this mandate

Nigeria is an amazing place; it boasts many things that span the extremes of poverty and potential, merit and mediocrity, service and self-service.

As President Goodluck Jonathan begins to bed in as a substantive president of the country with his own mandate since every other substantive political post he has assumed has been by the accident of his predecessor’s misfortune, the last have succumbed to the scythe of the Grim Reaper, there have been great expectations of this man.

I have also been caught in the wave of this because the thinking was he not being of the typical garrulous, mendacious, megalomaniacal, Machiavellian and rent-seeking political class presented the possible shift in Nigerian political values and direction.

As ones patience is reaching exhaustion one somehow has to retain the semblance of the benefit of the doubt that this man embodies positive change for Nigeria in the four years he has been given to be at the helm of Nigeria’s political hierarchy.

How special is advice?

He has now been engaged in the process of building a team to help dispatch his duties and one does wonder if the whole process has not been overrun with political machinations and the pretentions to change that on closer scrutiny looks phoney at best.

Besides the screening of ministers that number over two score to help in the delegation of executive function and power, he has appointed Special Advisers with titles that make the names of Snow White’s seven dwarves seem like a serious rocket-science exercise.

Looking at the list of special adviser roles, it is important to comment on what they might mean and if any of the roles inspire any confidence in Nigerians hoping for meaningful change from this regime.

Special Adviser on propaganda

Special Adviser to the President on NEPAD (The New Partnership for Africa's Development), much as there is a need for focus on Africa’s development, there are issues with what developmental process the president advocates for Nigeria beyond seemingly vacuous words.

Special Adviser to the President on Research and Strategy, it remains to be seen if this is really about objective technocracy or propaganda, I will plumb for the latter because the man in this role; Oronto Douglas runs the social media persona of the president which takes the art of obsequiousness to a level exacerbating violent emesis.

Special Adviser to the President on Energy; any Nigerian would hope that the person in this role has some good short-, middle- and long-term ideas that can be realised in tackling the energy issues of Nigeria from the good management of our mineral resources to the harnessing of natural sources of energy for the development of our infrastructure.

Phoney Adviser of ethics

Special Adviser to the President on Social Development; on does wonder exactly where this fits, for human rights, education, health, security, safety, equality of opportunity, social mobility and many other things that would give Nigerians the pride of existence and nationhood.

Sarah Jibril, the lady who earned one singular vote in the ruling party presidential primaries now has the role of Special Adviser to the President on Ethics and Values. This sound laudable and noble as it is pretentious. Cynically, one would easily think this is advise on what the president might get away with as opposed to raising the standard of government and governance to deal with corruption and the way audited sources of income allows for thieves to hold sway in the corridors of power and escape justice with impunity – Honestly, one is not impressed.

Special Adviser to the President on National Assembly Matters; that is the snake-pit of Nigerian politics and the excess that Nigeria can hardly afford where those who have a duty to moderate executive power whilst promulgating legislation appear to have their snouts super-glued to the trough of Nigeria wealth that there is no time to them to sniff the air of reason – this job is probably important and it needs someone knowledgeable in the witchcraft of our obscure legislative system to wave the wand of getting things done in an affordable and hopefully an altruistic way.

Special Adviser on clueless antics

Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs, this matter is well beyond advisory to one needing effective and useful action, the past few regimes have shown themselves clueless with militancy taking the spoils of amnesty whilst the people themselves still wallow in deprivation with the militants and terrorists pretending to represent their people.

Special Adviser to the President on International Relations; much as we need someone in this role, the greater example will be in running the country well. Special Adviser to the President on Special Duties; it would appear this would be the person to project the office and influence of the president in some as yet undefined assignment, they somehow seem to rise to command the influence of chief adviser.

Rueben Abati, the erstwhile Head of the editorial board of the Guardian Newspaper becomes the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, this in my view overlaps with that of Research and Strategy, that makes two propaganda demons ready to wage war on the sensibilities of Nigerians – we would not be assimilated into that quagmire, if we can help it.

Special Adviser on the interesting

Special Adviser to the President on Gender Issues; this will be a tough task, be it that of the emancipation of women, the matter of infant and maternal mortality, genital mutilation, domestic violence, childhood marriage, primary healthcare delivery from immunization to the rights of women in conservative regions that subjugate them on the premise of religious adherence and obligations and it should also address the matter of minority groups – this would be an uphill battle with societal norms, religion, traditions, customs and a stridently patriarchal system of power that we have acquiesced to without debate.

Special Adviser to the President on Technical Matters; how that would keep the next satellite launch from falling out of orbit remains to be seen as it could overlap with matters that concern infrastructure, power, effective transport, the proper documentation of government material for adherence to the Freedom of Act as well the effective adoption of Information Technology services in government.

Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters (Office of the Vice President); Special Adviser to the President on Legal Matters (Office of the Vice President) and Special Adviser to the President for Special Duties (Office of the Vice President), the need of all these seemingly duplicated posts albeit in the office of the Vice President would be an interesting recipe for political intrigue.

Can we afford this?

The president cannot in and of himself be the sole repository of ability and drive to run the country but there must be a basic quality of leadership and nous to do the job with the advisors in some case just helping to fine-tune the ideas and reframe them into working and implementable policies – you have to wonder what is the validator of good advice over sycophantic subservience to the president.

It is arguable whether the executive arm of government does really need all these advisers who must find the ear of the President to dispense advice that might be useless, accepted or ignored. Where the roles overlap, the people might be seeking to curry favour as those in the court of the President play factions against each other with glee.

The Psalmist talked of the noisome pestilence, you can imagine how fatigued the President can become with the paralysis of analysis and the deluge of advice that he has no time to think through one set of ideas before they are overtaken with new ones for political expedience.

Many are called

Ultimately, running the Nigerian ship of state is not easy task but it begs the question whether Nigeria really can afford this model of democracy that appears to convert every principal piece on a chessboard into a pawn aspiring to promotion that will never materialise as the President surrounds himself with enough cannon fodder that he can so easily insulate himself from opprobrium and responsibility.

I fear that some of these activities all seems like quid pro quo for assuming office than one that engenders confidence in the possibility of a changed Nigeria, I must however give the President the benefit of the doubt much as I am quite unpersuaded of that result, I can handle pleasant surprise.

The least we can do is welcome the Court of Goodluck I and his courtiers of lords, chiefs, elders, thieves, sycophants, advisors - Nigerians all, proud to serve and be served.

Source of news story

234Next.com - Jonathan to swear in special advisers today

The detail of the special advisers was excerpted from a news article on 234Next.com, I uncharacteristically forgot to reference it in my original publication of this blog and I apologise.

Facebook: From figleaf privacy to fully dressed discretion

More Facebook about-face

Many of my friends and readers of my blogs would have read a number of postings about my experiences with Facebook.

There is no doubt that Facebook serves some purpose, I now have connections that date back to primary school about 40 years ago, a good number of secondary school friends are back in my social circle and I am also in contact with close and distant relations along with different acquaintances from all walks of my life.

In that way, Facebook provides a rich social networking experience, the problem arises when having put in all the information that creates the conditions for making, renewing or reestablishing connections you find that you have minimal control over who get access to that information.

Your privates are exposed

Facebook is a sponge for every detail of your life and everything you inadvertently put in can become global knowledge beyond your relations and friends to potential employers, detractors or worse.

Facebook itself is not known to have exemplary ethical conduct in the management of the privacy of its patrons, the company is in flux trying to determine who all this information from over 400 million accounts can be commercialised and monetarised without us having a say over what get push to us by our details or as a result of our relationship.

AllFacebook.com recently posted an article on how the default privacy settings had changed on Facebook between 2005 and April 2010 – I winced at how exposed I had become, it was like an involuntary strip-tease as you clothes were ripped off till I was left with the postscript of a tweet I posted – You only have a fig-leaf for your privates.

The animation of that graphics were originally published by Matt McKeon with the title - The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook – He includes information on how the data was sampled and the comments that follow do help one understand what might be at stake.

Rapidly evolving rules

What is driving the quest for more privacy and sometimes the exodus from Facebook is that the Terms of Service and rules are changing rapidly in favour of the company just exposing more and more of our information in the name of helping more social interaction – nothing could be further from the truth about that.

Personally, I have been actively locking down areas of information that I have put on Facebook just because I do not have much control over where all that information might end up.

Now, for those who are not as technically savvy or understanding of the finer details of privacy, secrecy and confidentiality – if you may know, these words are not synonyms, they mean completely different things, but you have to secure your privacy, manage your secrecy and definitely do not trust strangers with information you feel should be confidential – the underlying question being who can you trust with detail about what you like, what you do and what you’ll rather not share.

How to …

Jason Perlow, a writer for ZDNet; a technical magazine offers some advice in a video which can be very helpful in Lock Down Your FaceBook Profile in 20 Minutes (Video) – some of his suggestions take it to the extreme with the assumption that only friends that already know you are your default contacts, but you need to leave in enough information to distinguish you in some way to old friends like schools and other basic historical information.

You need something to network with but be smart about what you leave in, what you take out and in a more granular setting create lists of most trusted friends and give them more access whilst closing access to others.

Let us use Facebook for what we have intended for it to help us do, link up with friends and family and thwart attempt by the behemoth to convert our precious relationships into filthy lucre.

One piece of advices you should take away from this is to check your profile every month to see that it is still as watertight as you want it to be as Facebook shape-shifts around your privacy. Use Facebook but do not let it use you unethically and unfairly.

Sources

[1] INFOGRAPHIC: The History Of Facebook’s Default Privacy Settings

[2] The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook

[3] Lock Down Your FaceBook Profile in 20 Minutes (Video) | ZDNet

Facebook unwittingly The Truman Show II

Booking an about face

In the last two days I have read about the dangers Facebook poses to my privacy and life. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook has its uses and it has reconnected me with lots of old friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

Beyond that, I have wondered about my readiness for the torrent of the past that overwhelms you as one connection leads to another to another to another till memories long forgotten revive with almost nightmarish consequences like a genie that has been let out of the bottle and in the process broken the bottle never to return to captivity.

The articles I read were one giving reasons to quit Facebook [1] and the other about committing Facebook suicide [2], hara-kiri to give it the exoticism of Japanese.

Only me, only one, only I

After reading the first, I started to close down sections of my museum of the absurd, the exposure I had unwittingly allowed by default was way beyond comfortable and I started to click away at privacy settings and making a good deal Only Me, must less to Friends, the basics to Friends of Friends and the barest minimum to Everyone.

A few week ago, I found a tool that allow me view a good deal of Facebook detail without being logged in, I should have known, but without getting to technical, I like solutions and especially software solutions and applications to imitate life.

In life, I have control

For instance, I can choose not to have my telephone number and address listed in a phone book, it means no one can randomly pick up the telephone guide for my city and find me, for all sorts of reasons – so on Facebook now, if you do not find me through another Friend, you will not find me.

In my home, I have doors, rooms and utility areas, friends are welcome to visit and they would be entertained in my living room, they would normally not be in my kitchen except when we have decided to be there and definitely not be in my bedroom except if they are visiting as guests – in which case, they would have my guest room.

I would be concerned if my friends, talk less of strangers were rifling through my cupboard and like draws out of drawers, even familiarity breeding contempt would not go that far.

In the open without clothes

That is where I have a problem with Facebook, you are a ready material for global voyeurism, your so-called home on Facebook has not walls, no doors, no windows, you are in full view, your living area just as exposed as your bed and your underwear – your secrets are public property – in fact, you unwittingly in The Truman Show [3] with the crassness of Big Brother [4] entertainment over which you have as much control as a prisoner in jail.

The cameras are focused on every bit of information you put there and if you are not technically savvy, someone has got your number and probably more.

Suddenly, you realise you want something called privacy, your own business being yours alone and a few secrets to take away that unpalatable aura of predictability that people know your history better than you that your identity has gone on an adventure long before you stepped out of your door.

Get back in the closet

I am not asking you to get off Facebook, but start slamming some doors, closing some rooms, locking your cupboards and keeping your linen out of view.

For once get back in the closet where you can secretly pleasure yourself without the fear of someone looking – surely, we all want a secret place for peace, quiet, tranquillity and discretion – the open book I had become on Facebook in the space of just over 4 months was frightening enough.

I am not yet committing hara-kiri but I do have the cyanide capsule ready for what might be the inevitable if Facebook does not begin to respect the fact that the last vestige of individuality is to have complete control on my privacy, I should be opening the doors to let people in, not finding out that the wind has blown off my doors, windows and roof as I scramble to keep life and property from total annihilation and destruction.

Sources

[1] rocket.ly - Blog - Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook

[2] Contemplating FaceBook Hara-Kiri | Tech Broiler | ZDNet.com

[3] The Truman Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Big Brother (TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Attempting to stem the tide of science with one veto

Moral politics stems science

Indeed, there should be ethical concerns related to use of embryos for stem cell research. These issues get assessed time and time again to ensure that the ethics of scientific research does affect moral sensibilities to the extent that it is completely unacceptable to society.

However, some scientific research regardless of the ends they might ultimately achieve can exert the reserves of moral inclinations or religious convictions and sometimes the plain assessment of conscience - but all that has to be weighed in context.

When it comes to the process of procreation as the President of the United States did say we all begin life as a small collection of cells, it is debatable whose moral compass defines the moral boundary that be being crossed.[1]

The value in early life formation

One might definitely see the issue of life beginning at conception rather than the first sign of noticing a pregnancy or at birthday, even though the birth date maintain serious significance to any existence on earth.

This for me is a difficult subject considering I was born at 26 and half weeks just coming to the end of the second trimester of gestation. Even forty years on from then, the viability of babies born at less than 24 weeks [2] is questionable as issues of life first and then that of the quality of life afterwards.

Only recently, scientists discovered that foetuses can feel pain at a lot earlier than the commonly accepted 29 weeks, five weeks earlier in fact.

In five days, Louise Brown would be 28, she was the first test tube baby conceived through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) when human eggs are fertilised outside the body and then transferred to the human's uterus to complete the gestation period.

In January 2007, with all good fortune, we would bear a child having conceived naturally.

IVF - 1977/Stem cell research - 2006

Back in 1977/1978, this issue of test tube babies would have been at the same place we are now with stem cell research - harvesting eggs for unnatural insemination and fertilisation would have had many condemning the heresy, if not the effrontery of man playing God.

The purpose was to bring childbearing to women and families that had heretofore been infertile or to us the more archaic word barren. IVF however, odes not work for every, but it took the work of two doctors Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards to bring this "miracle" of science to pass.

With it came hope for many and obviously, the need for regulation to prevent the abuse of that process. In the UK that is regulated by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) this allows for the weighing of the scientific value and ethical boundaries of work carried out in this field without the politicisation or emotive religiosity that could becloud due process.

The science of pressing the boundaries of knowledge

Once can only be thankful that work gets carried out in these fields because the attention to these issues would be part of why consideration was given to my viability at birth and many others like me.

In the same vein, stem cell is still at the point of research and abortion, which is the forceful ejection of a living foetus from the womb within the first trimester, is already enshrined in law.

I do not believe that scientists and researchers would engage in some embryo manufacture for research and mutilation was we have viewed with animal testing, rather, there is a view that some seriously beneficial purpose could be gained from dealing with hereditary illnesses and diseases.

We all already see a minor application of these ideas in blood type matching before transfusion and gene type matching before transplantation of organs amongst other areas of developing medical science.

Powerless against scientific advancement

There is no doubt that the photo-call with housewives and their toddlers at the announcement of Mr George W. Bush's first veto is significant, but thankfully, what the President has done is just to prevent the use of federal money in stem cell research - he is powerless against the advancement of science in that field globally. I am utterly grateful for that.

References

[1] CNN.com - Bush vetoes embryonic stem-cell bill

Bush uses veto on stem cell bill

Emotive power of US stem cell debate

Premature babies' disability risk