Nigeria media and fake news on a Range Rover – 1

“Journalists say a thing that they know isn’t true in the
hope that if they keep saying it long enough, it will be
true.” Julien Benda, 1857-1952.
“A journalist should be pursuing a fair rendition of truth
without regard to popular moods; the journalist should
not be swayed by public opinion, only by the pursuit of
truth..Malvin Kalb, 1997.VBQ, p 109.
I started compiling the VANGUARD BOOK OF
QUOTATIONS, VBQ, in the mid-1960s in New York City.
That was long before it occurred to me that I would be a
media practitioner; not a journalist. Nevertheless, I
always strongly supported a free press as the bedrock of
democracy. Freedom however is not supposed to be
absolute. It must be accompanied with a high sense of
responsibility on the part those in media. When that
quotation by Benda came to my attention, my instinct
was to leave it out. Immediately the thought came mind
to ignore it, another thought rushed in accusing me of
intellectual dishonesty if such harsh criticism of those
(i.e journalists) I have already started to love were to be
suppressed. Reluctantly, it was left in. It was fortunate I
did.
When Mr Gbenga Adefaye, then the Editor of VANGUARD
gracefully accepted to write the Foreword to the VBQ, he
made a distinction which is pertinent to today’s article.
According to Gbenga, who is now General Manager/
Editor-In-Chief of the paper, “The quote from Benda….is
simply put, about propaganda and not journalism.
..Because in journalism, “facts” are sacred, comments
(based on facts) are free.” Nobody on earth is more
qualified to define journalism than someone who had
spent over thirty years in the profession and was once
the President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors. Everything
that follows from now on will be based on Gbenga’s
submission about journalism and propaganda – plus my
submission about deliberate or inadvertent falsehood
being rendered as news report in Nigeria today by those
claiming to be journalists. The famous, or infamous,
RANGE ROVER reported to have been ordered by Senate
President Bukola Saraki will serve as an example of what
is becoming a national tragedy with regard to the
Nigerian media – print, electronic and especially social
media.
“Every piece of new technology…will in the end be used
quite differently from the way in which its proponents
first imagined”, said Sir Michael Perry, Chairman of
Unilever in 1995. (VBQ p243).
Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp etc were invented to
speed up communication between people in various
aspects of their lives. Today, they have become
instruments for disseminating defamation and falsehood
at the speed of light. And, the booster applications now
make it possible for the same person to send the
defamatory message to thousands of people at once.
When someone sent out a document linking former
Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor, Sanusi Lamido,
to Boko Haram, he sought to take shelter under the
anonymity which social media now provides to those hell
bent on calumny. Invariably, the peddlers of falsehood
and defamation bet on two facts. First, that the vast
majority of people are mentally and physically lazy and
would not wait for substantiation of the claims before
passing them on to people too eager to receive them;
and sometimes too willing to spread them. Second,
most of them are moral cousins to the late German
dictator, Adolf Hitler, 1889-1945, who created the
template for professional, as well as amateur liars when
he declared that “The great masses of the people…will
more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small
one.”
In the matter of the RANGE ROVER most media
practitioners, leaders of thought, Senior Advocates of
Nigeria, SANs, and the general public have fallen for a
great lie with only a small dose of truth in it. Permit me
to start from the tail end of the RANGE ROVER hoax
which started with an on-line publication. Permit me also
not to disclose the names of the publications and
individuals which will come under the hammer here. I
think the media have disgraced ourselves sufficiently
before all thinking people. Directing fingers of blame will
serve no purpose.
On March 30, 2017, a national newspaper carried a
“news report” (remember facts are sacred) titled “N370
MILLION VEHICLE PURCHASE: Nigerians condemn
Senate.” It then went on to publish reactions from seven
individuals representing various organizations or speaking
for themselves – obviously based on the question about
a N370 million vehicle purchased by the Senate. The
question which all those eminent Nigerians should have
asked the seven authors of that report is: is there a
N370 million RANGE ROVER anywhere in Nigeria bought
by the Senate? In fact, there is no such vehicle in
Nigeria. So, why did experienced journalists go about
asking people about a fake RANGE ROVER costing N370
million? Is that journalism?
A day before, March 29, 2017, another national
newspaper right opposite its Editorial on page 27,
published an article titled “Does the Senate need N298m
SUV”? It was well written by a contributor from Victoria
Island. According to the author, “Just as the President
cannot be insulated from the actions of the Presidency,
the Senate President would be insulting the intelligence
of Nigerians to claim that the Senate embarked on a
wasteful spending of N298m and he doesn’t know about
it.” Again, the question: is there a vehicle in Nigeria
purchased by the Senate for N298m? And, if there is
none, is it a demonstration of “intelligence” for the writer
from VI to expect Saraki to own up to expenditure of
N298m just to please the writer when there was no such
expenditure? Again, the truth is there is no N298m
vehicle in Nigeria bought by the Senate. The question
about journalism, however, is not to the author of that
ignorance mixed with defamation, but to the Ed-Page
Editor of the paper.
Several days before the publication of that article, Mr
Tokunbo Akindele, working for Lanre Shittu Motors, has
testified openly that the vehicle was imported at a cost
of $298,000 in 2015 when the prevailing exchange rate
was N165 to one dollar which came to N49.17m and the
Senate paid N62.5m for it in November 2015. He also
disclosed that the vehicles documents were “fake” as far
back as 2015. Two questions arise from these facts
known to the Editors. First, since the correct value of
the vehicle was known to be N62.5m on Monday, why
again publish an article about a phantom N298m vehicle
which is a figment of the writer’s imagination on
Thursday? I certainly hope the Editors know that there is
a distinct difference between a N62.5m car and another
costing N298m – even if the writer does not know.
There is no need to list all the publications regarding this
mysterious vehicle about which ordinarily sensible
Nigerians have made comments without ascertaining the
facts. I refrained from making any comments about the
story when it first appeared for four reasons. First, the
source of the story, the online media, is increasingly
striking me as an unreliable source of news. This is not
the occasion to list the number of stories attributed to it
which have turned out not to be true after all.
Second, most of the media houses which based their
own stories on that source were very unfair to the
Senate and the Senate President. They invariably started
out assuming that the online media was correct and few
bothered to ask the Senate President his side of the
story. Even those who did were already biased. When
Saraki disclaimed knowledge of the vehicle, the attitude
was “He must be lying”. Third, nobody was able to
provide a document to substantiate the purchase price
of the car. For God’s sake, this is a car not a helicopter
or small jet. Who ever heard of a RANGE ROVER costing
N298m or N370m – which ever figure the fertile
imagination of our journalists conjured up?….