By BASHIR ADEFAKA
“Considering all said and listed above, if it is true that 6 soldiers were killed by protesters and that 37 Police Personnel as well as 57 civillians were killed by the #ENDSARS protesters and CNN and those Nigerians who are celebrating it did not see the need to report them and be told, then we are a sick people in Nigeria. So, we need a healing.”
In the aftermath of October #ENDSARS protests in parts of Nigeria, the media have been awash with news about Lekki Toll Gate massacre, although none of the media (excluding The DEFENDER), which promote this report, has provided evidence to back up the claims.
Not even the now much more ‘celebrated’ CNN, despite its records of fake news destroying nations including Iraq and Libya, has been able to provide proofs to substiate its claim that troops of the Nigerian Army shot ‘live’ bullets into a crowd of protesters at the Lekki area of Lagos, thereby killing several people. The only thing that is constant in all of these is the fact that all he media, which promote the fake news, caused the destructions that followed the hijacked anti-police atrocities protests.
More saddening is that, much as government and the Nigerian Army explained to the best of their knowledge about the incident at Lekki, the more distrustful a section of the society became and, unfortunately, they are louder. They select what they believe. Once it is Nigerian Government, they do not want to believe. More hypocritically, as it looked, even the Lagos State Government, which ‘inadequacies’ played a roll in the mismanagement of the situation ab initio, they deliberately overlooked and went after Abuja. It this exposed their main intentions for the whole issues. The truth being that they did not want anybody to tell any truth that would derail the goal they set out to achieve. That explains why they call Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), being government owned, a liar and continue to believe news broken by any media they identify as enemies of government. They even boastfully tag any media report programmes and activities of government as “Buhari Media” with intent to intimidate them and make them switch over to their course, as if there is any aspect of journalism that prohibits a practitioner to be fair to government just he should be to others.
They therefore preferred to rather believe Channels Television, even weeks after the television station had flashed its broadcast of Black Tuesday that is Lekki Toll Gate massacre a FAKE NEWS and, along with AIT and Arise TV, has sustained national punishment for using fake news to destabilise the country, without which security, peace and economic stability they cannot exist r practice in peace.
What I found out was that, Channels TV and those other media take press freedom too far. There is no nation of the world where the press, the Fourth Estate of the Rhelm, operates as enemy of State. No matter how undesirable the man in power can be, the press has a duty to be fair to the office he occupies. This is one of the reason my best civil society so far operating in Nigeria is CISLAC, under the leadership of Auwal Ibrahim Umar (Rafsanjani), who would tell the government where it is not doing well and is not held back to praise it where his policies are doing great. But to the sadists under discussion, who choose a path different from CISLAC, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, all they see about government especially since 2015 has been ghosts where others see lives same the media that see through their lens only. As Fourth Estate, the media are well placed by nature as stakeholders in nation building, reason in the Qur’an, Allah makes provisions for the guidance of the media: any information you are sent or are given, ‘fatabayanu’ – verify, investigate, find out, clarify to establish the truth of it before you put it into the public space. But in Nigeria, the reality on ground has been so sad and indescribable.
Well, there has been this revelation about how the culprits deliberately aim at destabilising Nigeria with fake news. The staff are not foreigners. They are born, fed and grown Nigerians with their only lifeline Nigeria. If the sky falls on the country today, as a result of these evils they perpetrate, there will be no other country to which they can escape. But, sadly, because they are aware of the nature of fellow citizens about how they only want to hear bad and negative news reported of their country, they professionalise disremination of false and negative news under the disguise that “only bad news sell”. And today, not only bad news being fed to people has made Nigeria stagnant and so slow at climbing to development, it has even made the hitherto Noble Course of Journalism in the country, no longer professional destination of choice, either for serving or upcoming Journalists.
Or, how do any medium in the country explain setting religions and ethnic groups against themselves the way it is done in Nigeria? If not that practitioners jettisoned what they should lhave done objectively, supporting governance by monitoring policy implementation and reporting to government what those charged with enforcement are not doing well as well as doing well, policing in Nigeria would not have degenerated to the extent that SARS, established on good intention for protection of citizens from the evil ones among them, would be so brutal towards the same people it should protect. At any rate, I am yet to believe there was any normal, law abiding citizens that had been harassed by SARS operatives, considering the kind of people seen protesting the last time: mainly Yahoo Yahoo Boys, cultists, armed rubbers, prostitutes, drug pushers and other such black sheep of the Nigerian family. If the media had worked as partners in development with government,. they should have been able to identify and expose those criminals rather than choosing to stand with them whenever they are made to face the wrath of the law. That is why insecurity rate is high in Nigeria because, those who should expose perpetrators are covering, defending and protecting them. If not, what is delaying prosecution of
Chukwudi Onuamadike also known as Evans, the billionaire kidnapper in the country?
Instead, the media in Nigeria is seen to be good in action when a Northerner they do not want in power is there and so, it does not matter how much more his performances and achievements have been than those before him, they have chosen as stock in trade to deploy the power of information they control in ensuring that Nigeria will not know peace until his eight years tenure is over so as to be able to tag that tribe as always being the one making the country underdeveloped.
In-depth investigation into this further showed that it is simply because the sitting government takes fight against corruption to its heart, that is why, those identified media break Fake News in the morning and retract it with a flash of FAKE NEWS and APOLOGISE in the afternoon because they are full aware that their confession at later time is inconsequential to Nigerians, mainly of the ‘most educated’ South. They know that, to most Nigerians in the media concentrated South, once a lie is let into the airspace, not even an avalanche of equipment and technique deployed can get them to see the retraction and replacement as truth whereas the old one is not.
For this reason, many lives have been lost in this country and the media, upon which the vulnerable Nigerians rely and which should take up responsibility to ensure that people are well informed and educated with activities of State, do not help matters. It is either the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) is dictator of the editorial direction today or ethnic jingoists in the name of Afenifere, Ohanaeze, National Christian Elders’ Forum (NCEF) do it tomorrow.
The result of this is the unproven Islamisatuon, Northernisation, some other time, nepotism allegations against the Muhammadu Buhari Government. That trend continued until the purveyors of the allegations went and hijacked the initially well intentioned #ENDSARS movement to attempt change of government through back door after they failed to achieve it through the front door by democratic means, hence the emergence of the likes of Omoyele Sowore, Nnamdi Kano, in South West and South East, respectively, and killer militia leader Gana of the North Central, who confessed before his death to be part of Boko Haram terrorism that had caused killings to incite Muslims and Christians against one another in Northern Nigeria before he was finally killed in gun battle with troops of the Nigerian Army.
The aftermath of #EndSARS madness therefore, according to a Nigerian patriot, Sara Omalicha, is that while a section of Nigeria media connived with the likes of Cable News Network (CNN), a private television network in America, to continue to claim they stand by their so called investigative report of the Lekki Toll Gate, Lagos shootings by the Army and which they tried to, collaboratively, leverage on to solidify their unsubstantiated allegation of massacre against government forces, there were killings, maimings and rapes in Ikorodu, Mushin, Fagba, Agege and other parts of Lagos. Unfortunately, CNN and its local collaborators, who are mainly journalists and lawyers, never ever reported to their viewers, listeners and readers such deaths occurred. Why? Because, those murders and other crimes were, in truth, perpetrated by the same protesters who claimed to be protesting against brutality of Special Anti-Ribbery Squad (SARS). Is that journalism? Anyway, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, called the CNN’s caricature it presented as ‘investigative report’ Irresponsible Journalism while the Buhari Media Organisation (BMO) called it Gutter Journalism.
I cannot agree more. CNN had taken Africa for granted for long by misrepresenting countries of the continent, just like the roll it played in the Middle East, in the comity of nations. It must think that we would be so stupid to swallow those lies without first of all conducting a check. No wonder even a section of United States population today rather watch and believe in AlJazeera in preference to CNN and others doing like it in the US.
There must be an interest of this class of professionals in why they insistently cover up the killings and other atrocities of protesters during the October #ENDSARS movement, which have clear proofs, while they hold on to Lekki Toll Gate shooting of blank bullets because the Nigerian Army is involved.
If there was no such ulterior motif after all-revealing testimony of the Army, how come the CNN needed to now see this time as when to publish an attention diverter it called ‘investigative’ report? That was after even the Channels Television, AIT and Arise TV had not only admitted that they broke news, unprofessionally, based on concocted, sensational videos, audios and pictures posted on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and which are – in actual fact – fake news but also, they had been sanctioned indisputably to the tune of about N5 million each for using fake news to destabilize Nigeria.
In the aftermath of it all, it has become glaringly uncoverable that even the Army that accusing #ENDSARS lawyers did not want to be heard at the Lagos State judicial panel is a major victim of the protests as shown in the list below:
1). 6 Soldiers killed
2). 37 Police Personnel killed
3). 196 Police Personnel injured
4). 164 Police Vehicles destroyed
5). 134 Police Stations burnt.
6). Nigeria Customs, Nigeria Immigration Service all lost equipments, infrastructures and valuables to attacks during the crisis.
7). 8 Medium Security Custodial Centers in 6 States namely Ondo, Edo, Delta, Abia, Lagos and Ebonyi were attacked with 1,957 inmates set free and 31 staff members injured.
8). 57 Civilians died
9). 269 Private Corporate facilities burnt, looted or vandalized.
10). 243 Government facilities burnt or vandalized.
11). 81 Government warehouses looted.
No one is talking about these, not even CNN!! But the CNN and its cohorts only saw Lekki Toll Gate massacre without dead bodies nor blood stain on the ground at scene if incident. Sadly enough, they used video of a soldier in armoured tank, wearing desert camouflage with heave firepower gushing out in fighting Boko Haram terrorists in the North East as soldiers opening fire directly at protesters.
More saddening to bemoan was the attempt at the panel by one of the lawyers representing the protesters to ridicule the Army when he tried to prove that Brigadier General Ahmed Ibrahim Taiwo, Commander of Military Intelligence, Victoria Island, Lagos was wrong by extending his protective hands to Shoprite against looting protesters. The lawyer said “and you put on uniform?”. But the General proved to be smarter and more educated than he is, when he retorted: “am I supposed to wear babariga while on duty?”
Considering all said and listed above, if it is true that 6 soldiers were killed by protesters and that 37 Police Personnel as well as 57 civillians were killed by the #ENDSARS protesters and CNN and those Nigerians who are celebrating it did not see the need to report them and be told, then we are a sick people in Nigeria. So, we need a healing.
*WAKE UP is opinion article column of Osolo, Akure, Ondo State born Lagos based Journalist, Bashir Adefaka. Reach him via his email: omope72@gmail.com
