NIGERIA-POLITICS: Too Hot To Handle For The Media

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Dulue Mbachu

LAGOS, May 22 1996 (IPS) - At a time of political turmoil in Nigeria, the country has lost one of the few remaining people who symbolised the aspirations and principals of independence.

The death of Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first president and father of Nigerian journalism, has however presented a peculiar problem to the Nigerian press.

Although Zik, as he was popularly known, was reported to have died on May 11 at the age of 91, the government-owned Nigerian Television Authority and the privately-owned ‘Champion’ newspapers are not touching the story, more than one week later.

It is a sign of respect for the man, and also a case of once bitten twice shy following a fiasco in 1989 when the media had falsely reported his demise.

Two of his one-time political associates, K.O. Mbadiwe and Chief R.B.K. Okafor had confirmed the hoax as truth, with Okafor even claiming that he was by Azikiwe’s death-bed when the pioneer nationalist asked him to take over the mantle of his political leadership.

That both men died in succession not long afterwards only added to the Zik legend, and the press subsequently became highly cautious about speculations concerning his health.

“As far as we are concerned,” insists Emeka Omeihe, editor of the ‘Champion’, “Zik is not dead. Don’t forget Zik is a former president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Nigeria. Not until the federal government or the Obi of Onitsha announces it, we have no business saying Zik is dead or not dead.”

Indeed, so far no government official has said anything to confirm or deny the reports. Even most of his political associates have also refused to make any comments while awaiting the official announcement of his death.

As a red cap chief in his native Onitsha in eastern Nigeria, where he had the title of Owelle, tradition forbids the announcement of his death by anyone save the Obi, the traditional ruler of the town, or another chief to whom he might delegate the responsibility.

Okagbue Aduba, the youthful editor of ‘This Day’, the relative new-comer to the Nigerian media scene, which broke the story on May 13, concedes that official feelings on the matter deserve consideration.

“But it is also of such public interest,” he quickly adds. “We have a duty to inform the nation. We couldn’t wait for official announcement; that would take a long time in coming. The news has to be fresh to be news.”

Dele Alake, editor of ‘National Concord’, owned by detained multi-millionaire politician, Moshood Abiola, argues that: “It would be wrong for anybody to say we didn’t get the Zik story. We got it, but in choosing not to publish it we decided to err on the side of caution because of our experience in 1989. I was editor of ‘Sunday Concord’ then and I didn’t want a repeat.”

No Nigerian leader, past or present, personified the country and its aspirations as much as Azikiwe. Born in Zungeru, northern Nigeria in 1904 of Igbo parents, he was educated in Lagos in the southwest and Calabar in the southeast, before stowing away to America as a young man for further studies.

Along with bagging bachelors and masters degrees from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, in 1930, he could speak all of Nigeria’s major languages — Hausa, Yoruba, Efik and his own Igbo.

On his return from the United States, he went to Ghana to start his journalism career as editor of ‘African Morning Post’. The radical, nationalist tone of his newspaper caused the British colonial authorities a good deal of discomfort.

Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s independence leader, recalled in his autobiography that “my nationalism was also revived through the articles written in the ‘African Morning Post’ by Nnamdi Azikiwe, whom I had first met after he had addressed a meeting of the Gold Coast Teachers Association some years earlier in Accra.”

Soon afterwards Nkrumah was on his way to Lincoln University in the footsteps of Zik.

In 1936, Zik was forced to leave Ghana following a sedition charge brought against him and a Sierra Leonian, Wallace Johnson, who had written an article, ‘Has the African a God?’, denouncing atrocities being committed by Mussolini’s troops in Ethiopia .

He returned to Nigeria to found ‘The West African Pilot’ in 1937, the first in a chain of newspapers that numbered over 15 at one stage. His paper’s ‘fire-eating’ style of anti-colonialism helped politicise a generation.

While official pronouncements are being awaited on his death, much of the Nigerian media have been awash with tributes and recollections about the life and times of Zik.

Among the most widely published statements so far on his demise was issued by the president of Lincoln University, Dr Niara Sudarkasa.

“We believe that Dr Azikiwe,” says part of the statement, “has already been reunited with the three Lincoln men who will be included in any who-is-who of the 20th century — Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall and Kwame Nkrumah.”