Ethelbert Okereon
The altercation between ace columnist, Sam Omatseye and frontline politician, business mogul cum newspaper publisher, Orji Uzor Kalu, finally brought to the fore one issue which many observers have been talking about in subdued tones, despite its devastating effects on both the journalism profession and the polity. For some of us, it is a welcome development since by it, both the country and the media trade may become saved by the growing impunity in the latter, wherein so-called newspaper publishers have turned newsrooms and their editors into instruments for political warfare.
It is a trend which many men of the pen profession have themselves complained about but in hushed tones, in what appears like an amazing connivance. Now that prominent figures in the media are becoming victims, there is hope that we may be getting to the end of this ugly state of affairs.
Omatseye in what appeared as an addendum to his Monday weekly column in The Nation of Monday, October 12, alluded to Kalu’s FIFA president project, wherein he opined that the former Governor of Abia State is not qualified to vie for that position. Omatseye, who wrote under the title, “Kalu for FIFA President”, also seized that opportunity to query Kalu for encouraging a certain news report in a newspaper published by him last Saturday, October 10, that appeared to have put Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in bad light.
The propriety or otherwise of Omatseye’s column is not the concern of this article even though I am aware that he is not the first Nigerian to hold that view. But in coming up with his own position on the matter, Omatseye gave reasons why he holds it: He feels that Kalu is not cerebral enough to hold such a position. On the story on Tinubu in the newspaper published by Kalu, Omatseye opined that “publishers like him make editors look unprofessional”.
We shall return to that but let me hasten to add that many Nigerians are by this quarrel knowing for the first time that Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu is the owner of The Nation. Minus media practitioners, themselves, especially in the Lagos – Abuja axis, and some politicians, especially those playing at the national level, majority of Nigerians do not link Tinubu with The Nation. The reason is simply because Tinubu’s imprimatur is not as noticeable on The Nation as Kalu’s is on his own newspaper(s).
Unlike Tinubu and The Nation, Nigerians are unmistaken that Kalu is the “publisher” of the The Sun titles because both he and the handlers of the titles flaunt it. That is not a bad idea on its own but we can now see the other side of it; which is that while Omatseye, in the instant case, had no hesitation in accusing Kalu of collaborating with his editors to do “unprofessional” things, it is hard to conversely accuse Tinubu and his editors in The Nation in like manner.
It is no longer new that many Nigerians believe that Kalu uses the newspaper(s) he publishes to fight his political battles. While some are quite obvious, like in his fight with the immediate past governor of Abia state, Senator T.A Orji, many Nigerians tend to dismiss otherwise constructive opinion articles written by even brilliant staffers of the stable as the views of Orji Uzor Kalu.
I am aware that among the small fraction of Nigerians who know of Tinubu’s involvement with The Nation, there is the general belief that the newspaper tends to tilt towards Tinubu’s political interest, but there have been no brazen cases of its columnists consistently and persistently attacking one or two individuals as Kalu’s newspaper does on, for example (again), Senator Orji. Even smaller fellows like this writer who had the guts to say that Kalu and his columnists were overdoing it had our bodies ripped open and our entrails thrown to the dogs to devour.
Perhaps readers would remember the ordeals I suffered in the hands of one of the columnists in one of Kalu’s newspapers recently. My offence was for saying that the house columnists in the stable should put a line between journalism and sympathy for the political battles of their boss.
Another in-house columnist continued from where the first stopped to “finish” me: He wrote about my “pretensions on intellect”. When I called the fellow, a damn good fellow nonetheless, he said, “You are making things difficult for us here”.
Thus, when the following day after Omatseye’s column, Kalu’s boys fired back at him, the reaction from many quarters was “see who is talking”. In a front page second lead story, the Daily Sun of Tuesday October 13, drew the attention of its readers to Kalu’s response to Omatseye thus: “You Goofed On Kalu – Ex Abia Governor’s Media Team Replies The Nation Columnist”. The newspaper then took the report to page 7 under the caption, “Call Omatseye to order, Kalu tells Tinubu”.
The story was the reported version of a full press statement titled, “Omatseye’s Rabid Goof On Kalu” and signed by one Kunle Oyewunmi on behalf of “Orji Uzor Kalu Media Team”. As expected, the so-called Kalu’s media team used unprintable (printable only in The Sun newspapers) on Omatseye.
But what struck me most is the ending paragraph: “we implore Tinubu to call Omatseye and his ilk in The Nation to order lest we ignite a conflagration that cannot be extinguished. Omatseye is not even in a position to clean Kalu’s shoes… a common mercenary like Omatseye should have a modicum of respect in his deviancy for a man that is greater than him in all ramifications of life except, perhaps, commercial poetry and media gangsterism”!
Witness the hyperboles: One, “a conflagration that cannot be extinguished” and, two, “Omatseye is not even in a position to clean Kalu’s shoes… Witness also the overt threat and the pedestrian allusion to “shoe shinning”. I am not deceived: the so called media team is made up of staffers of Kalu’s newspapers.
So, have things become that bad for the Nigerian media that one section of it is threatening a “conflagration” and indeed one that “cannot be extinguished”? Is Nigeria going to be set ablaze by the same journalists who fought for the return of democracy because of the freedom afforded it by the same democracy? Differently put, is this where the desperation to use Kalu’s newspapers to fight his political opponents has led the Nigerian media to? Some of us saw it coming and for daring to say it, we were taken to the cleaners because we have no medium to reply the acerbic by Kalu’s boys.
I do not necessarily feel vindicated but I know the ugly implications of the threat. This is perhaps the first time in our clime that a section of the media is openly posing such a threat to another section. But perhaps more worrisome to me as a friend and admirer of Kalu is the allusion to shoe shinning and the “greater than him” theory. It is too pedestrian to come from a “media team”.
Kalu does not need that type of comparison to be made between him and any fellow. To be fair to him, it is hard to agree that he sanctioned the story my friend, Omatseye, referred to. But given his posturing and body language, Nigerians are tempted to believe anything.
In my active days in the newsrooms, our colleagues from the other parts of the country knew me as a rabid defender of “Igbo big men”. I still do. Let Kalu not allow the wonderful achievement he made by establishing two newspapers, one of which is among the most widely read in the country today, turn out to be his undoing.
