The Nigerian Tribune was established in 1949 by Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Being seventy-five years previous in 2024 and therefore attaining the standing of Nigeria’s oldest surviving privately-owned newspaper is a testomony not solely to the foresight of Chief Awolowo and the managerial acumen of those that have stored its legacies afloat all these years. It’s also an indictment of all that has gone flawed with nation-building in Nigeria since independence in 1960.
My time on the Nigerian Tribune was top-of-the-line I’ve ever had by way of mental stimulation and engagement. The editorial board assembly was at all times an intense one which tasked our essential views on points surrounding Nigeria’s economic system, political standing, democratic governance, worldwide relations, and all sundry issues that relate with the founding imaginative and prescient of the newspaper.
An Editorial Board that had the imprint of Alhaji Lateef Jakande, Aiyekooto Chief Olabisi Onabanjo, Abba Saheed Akogun Tola Adeniyi, Mr. Felix Adenaike, Mr. Biodun Oduwole, Mr. Folu Olamiti, Chief Ebenezer Babatope, Dr, Dokun Bojuade, Prof. Ebenezer Obadare, Prof. Wale Adebanwi, Prof. Farooq Kperogi, my colleague on the Nationwide Institute (NIPSS), Kuru, the late Dr. Obadiah Mailafia, Edward Dickson, Dr. Lasisi Olagunju, Debo Abdulai, Sina Oladeinde, Prof. Adeola Adenikinju, Dr Festus Adedayo, Dr Wale Are-Olaitan, and so many different worthy gladiators of the journalistic guild. The Nigerian Tribune needed to guard its ramparts in opposition to an encroaching debilitation of journalism because the fourth property of the realm. On the top of the executive violence of consecutive navy regimes in Nigeria, the press and the media grew to become the whipping boys that have been subjected both to the tradition of silence underneath the jackboot, or have been lured into the nice and cozy arms of corrupt tendencies. It subsequently takes solely a fearless newspaper to maintain churning out editorials which can be sufficiently pungent and incisive to retain the sense of what an intrepid and moral journalism should appear to be.
It was not shocking subsequently that the Tribune can be one of many retailers for my mental restlessness and my coming of age by way of reform advocacy. I used to be then a public servant that was battling the problem of being impartial and nameless whereas additionally passionately attempting to push the elemental components of institutional reform and administrative issues into the general public consciousness. And being within the midst of eminent students, lecturers, journalists and personalities was all of the encouragement I wanted to contribute my very own quota to the essential enunciation of what ails Nigeria’s postcolonial standing and the way it may very well be resolved. I’m a improvement thinker and institutional reformer, and Nigeria’s predicaments can’t be divorced from the lackluster efficiency of her civil service system and its functionality readiness to capacitate democratic governance.
The importance and persevering with relevance of the Nigerian Tribune can’t be dissociated from the ideological sophistication and foresightedness of Awolowo’s nationalism and patriotic dedication to the Nigerian state. Awolowo’s mental and political engagement with the Nigerian state was one in all powerful love. Although for him, Nigeria was “a mere geographical expression,” it was the accountability of Nigerian nationalists and statesmen and girls to fill out its potential and duties to its plenty of residents. And Awolowo needed to seize the dilemma of being a Yoruba chief and a Nigerian nationalist by the horn. Being Yoruba, in his reckoning was a crucial plank in holding up Nigeria to its plural essence, quite than a divisive ethnic ingredient. To show his dedication to fashioning a really vital ideological framework that will floor democratic governance, Awolowo insisted on democratic socialism as Nigeria’s ideological approach out of her postcolonial nationwide morass.
Democratic socialism is a novel ideology. For democratic socialists, capitalism can’t be trusted to ensure important freedom and equality. Therefore, there’s the necessity for the state to intrude within the economic system whereas additionally facilitating political and financial democracy. Awolowo’s model of democratic socialism is much more distinctive. He advocates a restricted type of social or public possession of assets and a decentralized system that allows restricted central authorities. This suits into his understanding of the plural nature of the Nigerian state and the importance of a federal system that enables the federating areas and states to develop at their very own tempo. The state and its federating items should nevertheless facilitate state-led infrastructural improvement that channels the state’s assets into schooling and others.
ideology requires a mouthpiece that might stand as a essential middleman between the state and the society, and between the federal government and the ruled. The Nigerian Tribune, inside Awolowo’s governance and political imaginative and prescient, was imagined to represent a gadfly that regularly and persistently stings the federal government of the day into an incessant consciousness of its accountability to the plenty. Awolowo was satisfied of the relevance of his ideological predisposition for the political well-being of the Nigerian state, and so he was decided to pursue that ideological crucial by the institution of a privately owned newspaper as a platform for disseminating the weather of democratic socialism, critique consecutive governments on their many governance deviations, and preserve alive the problem of creating life significant for Nigerians.
In fact, we can not flip a blind eye to the quick cause that led to the institution of the Nigerian Tribune—a reactive improvement that sought to counteract Nnamdi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot and its ethnic triumphalism. That was the prerogative of Awolowo and the remainder of the Yoruba political class, to undermine the self-righteous pursuit of Igbo nationalism by Azikiwe.
Nevertheless, it was not solely Azikiwe that suffered the untoward penalties of a devastating essential pen. The Tribune was additionally deployed within the inside rivalry between Awolowo and S. L. Akintola, Awolowo’s nemesis within the Western Area. The unlucky result’s the position that the newspaper performed in stoking the fireplace that conflagrated the area. However the Awolowo-Akintola is also seen from an ideological perspective, the battle between democratic socialism and the capitalist path favored by Akintola. And it might appear that Awolowo received out as a result of he understood the ability of the media, and Tribune not solely constructed Awolowo as he wished to be constructed, but additionally constructed the ideological actuality he wished Nigeria to undertake for the betterment of the individuals.
The Tribune’s metamorphosis through the years is a testomony to its sturdy resilience and a self-reflexive capability to maintain rethinking its targets throughout the context and challenges in time and area. Whereas different rivals of a bygone period have been swept underneath the carpet of historical past, The Tribune has nestled itself into relevance by a constant articulation of the relevance of Awolowo’s nationalist name for a accountable authorities with an ideological imaginative and prescient for making Nigeria work for Nigerians, thus conferring on it the outstanding garland of being Nigeria’s oldest privately-owned newspaper. And that primarily is its personal legacy particularly in a technology that’s technology-driven and social media targeted. The affect of the social media in the present day speaks to a type of epistemological relativism that challenges the importance of reality. The social media fragments actuality in a approach that has implications for journalism. Now, everybody with a cellphone and internet-access can report any information from any angle and perspective. The sensational rated by virality has obliterated the target.
The essential query is how do we start to grasp journalism in a context of postcolonial political predicament and in a post-truth world? Can journalism afford to be dragged into the turbulence of post-truth reporting? Whereas not discountenancing the importance of social media as a platform for resistance and political mobilization, we can not additionally ignore its capability for the fragmentation of reality and the capability to sensationalize reality. After we situate journalism between the moral accountability to mediate affect and facilitate motion, then we instantly see how journalism is conjoined to ethics; certainly, we see how journalism that lacks ethics turns into a harmful handmaid of a post-truth world. We start to see the dire challenges of reporting the info inside a postcolonial context like Nigeria the place info are sacrosanct to the willpower of the well-being of Nigerians and the forging of a powerful nation. Exterior of an moral accountability to gatekeep journalism, what occurred because the disaster of the Western Area turns into virtually inevitable in a state experimenting with democratic governance and needing an moral journalism to make sense of it.
That is the place it is sensible to find the longer term prospects of the Nigerian Tribune in up to date Nigeria. To beat its sordid previous and consolidate its present achievements, the Tribune should situate itself on the forefront of moral journalism that retains alight the ideological underpinning of the position that journalism can play in articulating the imperatives of democratic governance, the challenges of serving as a watchdog that persistently places democracy underneath vigilance, and the requirements of gatekeeping the skilled ethic of patriotic journalism. Henry Anatole Grunwald, former United States ambassador to Austria, aptly sums the dilemma of journalism in in the present day’s world: “Journalism can by no means be silent: that’s its biggest advantage and its biggest fault. It should communicate, and communicate instantly, whereas the echoes of marvel, the claims of triumph and the indicators of horror are nonetheless within the air.”
Traversing the road between advantage and vice, for journalism in Nigeria in the present day, calls for a major reflection on the governance construction of any newspaper. In its up to date iteration, the Nigerian Tribune appears to have stumble on a essential understanding of staffing eminent personalities, from lecturers and students to astute journalists and editors with the acumen for excellence. It’s to the governance construction one should then search for a constant goal that navigates the horrible terrain of politics with an moral compass and the usual of objectivity. That is each the legacy that the Nigerian Tribune has left for print journalism in Nigeria, and the accountability it should preserve shouldering to uphold its service to democracy.
• Prof. Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Fee, Abuja ([email protected])
