Nigeria Content Online

As the Holy Books direct we rejoice with those rejoicing. We
rejoice with the rank and file of Nigerian journalists on the July 18th release
of their four colleagues and their driver kidnapped a week earlier in Abia
State. We rejoice with the victims’ nuclear families that were spared the agony
of becoming widows and orphans.

We rejoice with President Goodluck Jonathan for seeing his
directive heeded that the journalists’ freedom be secured. We rejoice with
Police Inspector General Ogbonna Onovo that his ‘people’ have heeded his pleas
and allowed him to keep his job. We also rejoice with the five kidnapped men
for living to narrate their disorienting experience of being blindfolded daily
and moved constantly around, feeding on a monotonous diet of bread, insults and
threats.

As time begins the healing process their one week loss of
freedom in Abia’s rain forest leaves some telling lessons. These include the
awareness that freedom is sweet, journalism comes with privileges, governance
must connect with the people, and crime must be punished.

Since Monday, the media have been awash with images of relief
and joy on the faces of the victims and their families. These images contrast
the morose looks of the previous week when the media in a case of concerted interest
advertised the grief and sorrow of the victims’ families with compelling
visuals and reports that defined the coverage of the kidnap. The coverage was
so effective a visitor to Nigeria may be forgiven for thinking journalists were
the first set of people to be kidnapped in Nigeria. Some commentators have even
branded the coverage, abuse of access while others feared it could even
endanger the victims’ lives.

Thankfully, subsequent developments have not justified the
fears. On the charge of abused access, I think the journalists simply lived up
to their calling. Accounts of kidnaps have often been lacking in detail
principally because the victims and their families shy away from public
pronouncements beyond thanking heavenly forces for their release. Even when the
media suspect that ransom payments accounted for the rising cases of kidnap,
they could not say so categorically.

The kidnap this time thus afforded the media opportunity to
deepen kidnap reporting. Rather than chase scared, reluctant, and usually
anonymous victim-sources for the necessary leads to write informed articles,
the media found in the plight of their colleagues the occasion to humanise the
reports by conveying the enormity of the grief suffered by the victims’
families. By so doing, the media put faces and voices to the menace that
kidnapping causes.

They showed weeping wives, dishevelled relations, and troubled
citizens. For every report and image published on the plight of the journalists
the media spoke for those who have passed through similar situations, and those
who may well face such challenges. The media reports provoked active state
interest and intervention. The President challenged the police; the Police high
command relocated its operational headquarters to Abia, threatening fire and
brimstone. Abia State Governor Theodore Orji suddenly woke up to communal
relations, challenging the communities to give up the merchants of terror.

Rather than abused access, what the media demonstrated was
privileged access.

Traditionally, the media serve society as purveyors of
information, discussing the human condition, identifying heroes and villains,
the knowledgeable and the ignorant, the bold and the timid, the beautiful and
the ugly, the important and the trivial. Often, these accounts are about other
members of society as journalism training expects its disciples to report and
not make news. Occasionally, where its members’ direct experience will amplify
meaning, journalism permits the reporter to play the newsmaker.

In this instance, the kidnapped men were reluctant newsmakers,
their families, accidental headline grabbers. From their one-week detention, we
have learnt that the kidnappers are young men in their prime, who attribute
their new vocation to lack of jobs or business opportunities and an eagerness
to avoid the dimming of their future by visionless governance.

Since the kidnap of the journalists is just a chapter in the
larger story of insecurity of life and property, focus must return to what
still needs to be done to ensure security in our cities, towns and villages.
Good governance is not an option. It is the reason for being in office.
Governor Orji’s engagement with the communities must be sustained; people of
questionable characters must be probed, indicted citizens prosecuted fairly.

The virtues of consultation, cooperation and communication in
governance all over the country must be promoted; consultation on communal
needs and policy formulation, cooperation on executing public policies and
programmes and regular communication of prospects and problems must be
followed. Conditions for gainful employment must be created, diligence,
rewarded and indolence, punished.

Corruption must be curtailed. The police must be restructured
and better equipped for organisational efficiency.

Lastly, in this age of electronic money transfer, it is strange that our
journalists were moving around with millions in cash, reportedly snatched by
their abductors. It does little credit to our intelligence or to our
reputation.