Fayemi Reminds Journalists of Their Roles in Nation building.
Executive Governor of Ekiti State, Dr Kayode Fayemi at the 6th Convocation Lecture of The Nigerian Institute of Journalism has reminded journalists and g
of their important roles in national security and nation-building.
Being the guest speaker of the lecture topic “Media, Security And Nation Building” held today in the NIJ Auditorium the once journalist and well-published scholar of war studies was preluded to his lecture with a fourteen-question laden chairman remark of Mr Ray Ekpu, the Vice-Chairman Governing Council of NIJ.
The two-time Governor of Ekiti state started his lecture by tracing the history of the Nigerian press, noting that the pioneers including Richard Beale Blaize, Probert Campbell, Owen Emerick Macaulay, Kitoye Ajasa, Ernest Ikoli, Herbert Macaulay and some others who were originally not journalists but public intellectuals with different professional training in law, medicine, engineering, architecture, even priesthood, or technicians and merchants, saw their work as a nation-building project and not just newspaper reporting. “they recognized that the important tasks of their age could not be accomplished without using the press to conscientize their people and build the public sphere that was necessary for the work of mental, social and political emancipation” he said.
The generations of the press in Nigeria after during and after the colonial rule, sets of Azikiwe’s West African Pilot and its contemporaries, of The Guardian and NewsWatch of Stanley Macebuh and Dele Giwa in the 1980’s, and the later press organisations led by the Onanugas, Igiebors, Chris Anyanwus, Obaigbenas, Ajibades and Olorunyomis were described as political press, cautious and fearless press and “reckless for a reason” press respectively by Fayemi.
He lamented the inadequacy of the narrow and rigid orientation of the Nigerian security establishment in facing the threat faced by the nation and the failure of the media in providing the citizens with the required explanation of the issue bedevilling the society always reproducing sensational opinions as news and giving less attention to issues of national psychology.
Reminding the practitioners of their roles and as solution bringer to the problems of the Nigerian democracy he quoted functions of the media in a liberal democratic state to include: surveillance of development; agenda setting; providing accessible platforms for intelligible and illuminating advocacy; holding public officials accountable; education and motivation of citizens about politics and participation in civic life and maintaining independence and integrity.
He also called for a media that promote inclusion and not sectarian exclusion as a solution to current Nigeria experiencing security challenges at every corner of her territory.