I have always been fascinated by those who apprehend and interpret events and things; those who seek to “inform” and “enlighten” others. I have also always known that these “seekers of the ‘truth’” and interpreters hold a special place in time and space in all human societies; and that what they disseminate are opinions, not necessarily the truth. These opinions are quite often referred to as knowledge; our consciousness of them as the process as knowing.
Being conscious of the foregoing, especially in a class society (a society divided by its economic foundations broadly into two as the exploiters and the exploited), enables us immediately to also understand that what we accept dominantly as knowledge or even truth depend on the character of the foundations of the power of that dominant class.
True, journalists (and these must be apprehended as including all kinds of media practitioners – print, radio and TV, electronic, internet, virtual and online, etc.) deal with all manners and categories of information. But the singling out of “Security”, “Party politics” and “Election Coverage” for our discussion appears to me to be not just selective; the selection is eclectic. In this regard, I have struggled to link the various elements of the topic of our discussion.
In most of what they call “democracies” (specifically liberal democracies – characterised by “market forces” economies and periodic “multi-party” electoral processes), elections and electioneering are largely illusions erected by ruling classes that allow the marginalised masses to, they claim, elect governments of the ruling class. With liberal democracy and its economic paradigms globalised and supervised by its inventors – Euro-American imperialism, the peripheries mimic the centers, the metropolises, more and more.
We must also address the situation of a journalist as an employee, i.e. apart from her/his private and individual interests that define his/her work. The implications of this are clear because the employer or employing organisation has an interest, business, and therefore profit goals, which shape what issues are searched and researched and which political and ideological forces structure reportage! This is equally true with regards to the increasing privatisation of news production (information production) and dissemination through blogging and on-line platforms – a situation that does, and will, increasingly individualise journalism as a profession! Needless to say, all these are about entrepreneurship and profit!
To begin with, one of the key myths of liberal democracy is that everyone can vote and be voted for; of course that’s absolute non-sense in any liberal democracy. As for the insistent imperialist control in the peripheries, the unending role of international finance capital (IMF, the World Bank, etc.) and the sponsoring states (in Europe and the Americas), including increasing incidents of subversion and regime change, need not delay us here.
Journalists as seekers, interpreters and members of the proletariat
The public image preferred by journalists is that of seekers of information, and seekers of ideas, facts and the truth which are then communicated, actually interpreted, often to a targeted audience. The subjects investigated, their processes and language are quite often considered to be neutral, unbiased, and detached. These all have problems not only because seekers and seeking occur in ideological and cultural ambiences, but because problems of commitment also vitiate neutrality and detachment!
Just like “Journalists” the neutrality of the press on most issues cannot be taken for granted. The press invariably reflects class and other social interests, and, therefore, responds to the task of protecting those interests. This is true for virtually all cultural institutions (the press, faith and religious institutions, public bureaucracies, educational institutions, etc.)
Like academics, lawyers, thinkers in traditional societies, religious leaders and scholars, and students, we may conceptualise journalists as Intellectuals. And once we do that, we must contemplate all the activities of these categories from the point of view of commitment – class, economic, cultural, political, etc.
We must also address the situation of a journalist as an employee, i.e. apart from her/his private and individual interests that define his/her work. The implications of this are clear because the employer or employing organisation has an interest, business, and therefore profit goals, which shape what issues are searched and researched and which political and ideological forces structure reportage! This is equally true with regards to the increasing privatisation of news production (information production) and dissemination through blogging and on-line platforms – a situation that does, and will, increasingly individualise journalism as a profession! Needless to say, all these are about entrepreneurship and profit!
Samples of “social media” (on-line) news broadcast:
‘Popular Pastor Caught in the Act!’; ‘GoodLuck died!’; ‘Nigerian Masses Pray for Ukraine’; ‘Edo State: Fulani ooo! Happening Now!’ (posted for a full month); ‘247 Ikorodu Road Now on Fire’ (the post was on for weeks)!; Not to talk of lots and lots of pornography, violence, superstitions and opiating celebration of celebrities, unreflective worship of wealth among the “successful”.
Foundationality of the Political Economy of Our Context
There is something about everything in society that we must trace to the political economy of that society – the connection between economic activities (production, distribution, and exchange) and the political and social control of those activities – who or which group owns or controls the wealth of society? How is the power to exert that control, and retain the control, exercised?
What is the character and what are the dynamics of the economy of the society – producing economy (raw material production and export; raw material production and local processing and manufacture, rentier economy etc.). The details of these should not delay us; it should suffice to emphasise that these, along with the autonomy of local ruling circles, will be crucial for the consequences of the character of the economy and its dynamics. Of course politics has to do with aggregating the varying interests in a polity (an organised society) to pursue specific economic, social and cultural policies. In all these, economic policies are pivotal. That is why political power decides who gets what, how much, and when.
The electoral laws, the appointment of electoral officers, the laws guiding the founding and the funding of political parties, the entire cultural ambience of elections and electoral process, the capacity for engaging in post-election election-related disputes and litigations, are all in the custody of Nigeria’s ruling class. Who can be voted for and, to a large extent, even who can vote is in the custody of the ruling class.
Political power in class society like Nigeria’s is exercised by the ruling class – the dominant class. All the instruments of the state (laws, law enforcement, cultural institutions) are, stripped of all their pretences, in the custody of the ruling class. Because indeed, there are entrenched pretences to persuade the under-classes in society that the state and its instruments (enumerated above) are there to protect all and sundry when, in reality, the state and its apparatuses are the organised power of the ruling class exercised by governments: not of the people but of the ruling class.
Liberal Democracy, Political Parties and Electioneering
To understand the character of what is called political parties in liberal democracies, we need to re-iterate our understanding of liberal democracy itself; i.e. the dominance of market forces and periodic elections. Under the dominance of liberal democracy globally, generalised inequality at national and international levels, brutal and asymmetric wars and conflicts, and unprecedented crisis of the environment have all escalated. These conditions had become especially precarious in the peripheries of the capitalist neoliberal globe.
It is in the foregoing global ideological context that we must understand the nature and processes of what they call political parties as, essentially and effectively, instruments of negotiation among factions of the ruling class particularly, in the peripheries of capitalism: like Nigeria!
Liberal Democracy hardly countenances class struggle as the motif force of history. Yet, this must be our starting point for understanding the socio-economic, political and cultural crisis in countries like Nigeria.
Today in Nigeria, all registered political parties, and especially the mainstream ones, subscribe to neo-liberalism (private-sector-led economic policies). Every qualification of their economic and social policies including social democracy or what is call welfarism, along with mantras such as War-Against-Corruption are illusions designed to attract the oppressed segments of society and the disadvantaged, disgruntled, or short-changed segments of the ruling class.
The electoral laws, the appointment of electoral officers, the laws guiding the founding and the funding of political parties, the entire cultural ambience of elections and electoral process, the capacity for engaging in post-election election-related disputes and litigations, are all in the custody of Nigeria’s ruling class. Who can be voted for and, to a large extent, even who can vote is in the custody of the ruling class.
As of today, April 2022, the condition for a presidential candidate just to pick the nomination form in one of the registered political parties (with at least ten interested members, and still counting) is N100 million! And comparable stipulations down the line to the ward level!
The cost of conducting elections is yet another matter with INEC’s mandate involving massive commercialisation and accumulation!
Political parties, ideology and class in post-Independent Nigeria
Political parties, strictly speaking, cannot be said to exist if there are no essential political differences among what they call parties. Groups that parade themselves as political parties in the absence of such political differences are, at best, factions of the same party. Today in Nigeria, all registered political parties, and especially the mainstream ones, subscribe to neo-liberalism (private-sector-led economic policies). Every qualification of their economic and social policies including social democracy or what is call welfarism, along with mantras such as War-Against-Corruption are illusions designed to attract the oppressed segments of society and the disadvantaged, disgruntled, or short-changed segments of the ruling class.
There are thus no political parties as such; what exist are quite labile coalitions of individual and small-group bands of traders and accumulators with unstable conspiracies from, and into, which individuals can move. That is also why only very few Nigerians can say they have seen the Manifesto of any of the mainstream political parties!
But as a class, the Nigerian ruling class is bound consistently with the ideology of private accumulation which is based on looting of resources and negotiating groups (“parties”) for access to those resources.
The obverse of the ruling class is, of course, the working class whose social base is the masses of the deprived, oppressed and marginalised. The ideology of the working class is socialism – popular democratic control of production, distribution and exchange.
Two major elements of what is referred to as “insecurity” need to be identified. They are directly related to the political economy, economic policies, political power, class, inequality, and particularly, growing deprivation among the masses. We are referring first to Social Insecurity (varieties of unemployment, lack of access to means for sustaining livelihood, pervasive ignorance, etc.). Secondly, we are referring to insecurity arising from plain criminality (armed robberies, “banditry”, ritual murders etc.) and clashes of ethnic and communal groups arising from population (including livestock) movements and land disputes among neighbouring communities arising from increasing ecological pressures, land seizures by the rich and the resultant landlessness across the country.
It is the foregoing ideological separation of the two main social classes that constantly manifest in class struggle – the motif force of history. It is the fundamental character of class division that elections and electoral processes enable the ruling class to hide in liberal democracies. The oppressed are persuaded, via periodic elections that they are choosing those who govern when, in fact, they keep electing from the same class; with the same class commitments.
Journalists, Elections and Electoral Coverage
We already alluded to the complicated interactions of interests and the consequent ambience under which the journalist and the press, both (and especially the latter), usually idealised as neutral, perform their function. We observed that as intellectuals (seekers and interpreters of knowledge and, possibly, “the truth”), they can be simply “workers” or “committed workers”!
In most liberal (and especially the peripheries like Nigeria) democracies, class struggle goes on with or without elections and electioneering; and only marginally via electioneering, for reasons we already identified. In a sense that is not trivial, electoral contests are really contestations inside the ruling class. But in actual fact, what the press and the journalists are asked to cover is the contest for state power among factions of the ruling class.
A Political Economy of Security and Insecurity in Nigeria
Two major elements of what is referred to as “insecurity” need to be identified. They are directly related to the political economy, economic policies, political power, class, inequality, and particularly, growing deprivation among the masses. We are referring first to Social Insecurity (varieties of unemployment, lack of access to means for sustaining livelihood, pervasive ignorance, etc.). Secondly, we are referring to insecurity arising from plain criminality (armed robberies, “banditry”, ritual murders etc.) and clashes of ethnic and communal groups arising from population (including livestock) movements and land disputes among neighbouring communities arising from increasing ecological pressures, land seizures by the rich and the resultant landlessness across the country.
Needless to say, only a political economy superintended by a pro-people ruling class can address these problems. On the contrary, what the neo-liberal ruling class policies do is to exploit and intensify the variety of sources of insecurity.
Where do the press and the journalists come in on the question of security and insecurity?
From the foregoing, it should be obvious that generally speaking, journalists and the press in general, had been selective in their reportage regarding security. They have also, on the whole, dealt with elements of the security crisis in isolated and generally disjointed, and non-holistic, ways. These shortcomings, while they may not have arisen from design, create disabilities for the public – the consumers of the products of the media and the practitioners – the journalists!
Some of these shortcomings we must trace to commercialism and intellectual unpreparedness.
Conclusions and the way forward
Notwithstanding the appearance of complexity in the topic we are asked to discuss, what we are ultimately asked to contemplate is the intervention which journalists, the media, and the press are called upon to make in the growing crisis of the Nigerian society. In this regard, we contemplate journalists as intellectuals – those who must search relentlessly for the truth and disseminate same without the fear of where it will lead.
Nigeria, today, is a class society; and some of us insist, while not denying the existence of other contradictions, that the primary contradiction is class. We also insist that the unending underdevelopment, inequality and generalised violence in Nigeria result from the ruling class ideology of private accumulation which benefits Nigeria’s less than one per cent.
Nigeria’s working people, their movement and their allies may engage, as a distinct class, in electoral politics to expose it as the agenda of the ruling class and as mobilisation episodes and moments; and that as alternative and autonomous peoples party – the device of the movement for advancing the autonomy and visibility of The Peoples Alternative Political Movement which had its roots and overall political culture in the resistance which ante-dated the 1960 Independence.
I have always been, and I still am, a member of that movement (The Peoples Alternative Political Movement – TPAP-M) in its current phrase of development. TPAP-M is building links with centres of organised labour, socialist and socialist-oriented registered and unregistered political parties, organisations of youth, farmers, workers in the informal sector self-employed and unemployed.
Organising on the basis of the foregoing perspectives and the identified social base for that organising is an imperative because, in the immediate, the crisis of the neo-liberal capitalist economic order will intensify; election or no election, 2023 or no 2023. The deepening crisis will intensify mass frustration and anger, violence by state actors and non-state actors, superstitions and increased obscurantism, and instigation of ethnic, sub-ethnic and religious antipathies among the mass of the victims of the crisis.
In the circumstances, what journalists, their organisations and other categories of intellectuals have to do, is to avail the masses of the victims of the ruling class economic and social order, the totality of their talents and their unalloyed commitment.
Solidarity Forever!
Prof (Emeritus) Olorode is member, Secretariat Collective, The Peoples Alternative Political Movement (TPAP-M] He can be reached via: e-mail: omotoopo@gmail.com
