May 22, 2010
On Monday, the judge handcuffed the journalist. On Wednesday, the journalist handcuffed the judge’s career. The judge is Zainab Bashir. On May 13 when she raised the alarm about journalists in her presence, she was an Abuja Chief Magistrate. It was in that capacity that she was presiding over a popular N7.5 billion fraud case in Zenith Bank.
On Monday, the judge handcuffed the journalist. On Wednesday, the journalist handcuffed the judge’s career. The judge is Zainab Bashir. On May 13 when she raised the alarm about journalists in her presence, she was an Abuja Chief Magistrate. It was in that capacity that she was presiding over a popular N7.5 billion fraud case in Zenith Bank.
But for one moment that morning, Mrs. Bashir was somewhat less than magisterial. She was, you might say, blinded by a bolt of rage as she “discovered” the aliens in her esteemed courtroom. She ordered them out.
“I have a strong hatred for journalists,” she said in running soliloquy. “I had a bitter experience with them before. They have never been my friend and I have nothing to do with them now and in the future. No journalist can claim to be my friend.”
I can almost see her casting her superior gaze around her estate. “Where are the journalists?” she asked her court assistant. “Fish them out, they should leave my court immediately.”
I was not there, but I imagine she must have allowed a wink of time here, and then another. “If you are a journalist, leave my court room,” she is alleged to have continued. “What are you people doing here? What do you want here? It is not allowed. That was how you people messed me up three years ago by reporting falsehood against me. If you are a journalist, leave my court.”
It would seem that Lemmy Uhegbe, a reporter from The Guardian, is a little hard of hearing. Or may be he had enjoyed a heavy breakfast and was a little sluggish of limb. In any event, he seemed to have failed to answer the warning promptly. The angry judge had clearly used a hunting metaphor, “fish them out,” in her instructions.
In an event as frenetic as a N7.5 billion trial against top bankers, journalists are easy to spot. Although they are competitors, journalists hunt in packs at such occasions. In the drama in Mrs. Bashir’s courtroom, the first surprise is that the journalists agreed to be shooed out.
Mr. Uhegbe, it also appears, is a determined man. But he was eventually fished out. “Your Worship,” he appealed to the bench, “we are here to perform our constitutionally-guaranteed duty of covering the court’s proceedings.”
Mrs. Bashir, unable to believe there was actually a fifth columnist left in her court room, turned to her court assistant and wanted to know why there was yet one of the dregs of society left in there. “They are in disguise,” the orderly pleaded, conjuring images of spies in beards, make-up and masks, “I couldn’t identify them.”
Mrs. Bashir did not buy that one. “Police,” she ordered, “get him. Handcuff him and take him to prison. Tomorrow, I will listen to contempt charge against him…Let me teach (journalists) a lesson.”
Thus, instead of reporting suspects in handcuffs, Mr. Ughegbe found himself in handcuffs. They were soon later taken off when Mr. Ughegbe’s colleagues threatened civil disobedience, but I am sure one of his colleagues got a picture of him in his moment of agony. That picture will surface, someday.
Within two days, the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) in the Federal Capital Territory transferred the offending magistrate to Kuje Magistrate Court. That reaction followed protests from the Abuja Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, which asked for Mrs. Bashir to be sent to a job “where her emotional capacity will not be tasked leading to her becoming a threat to the public and those that come before her court.”
In a reversal of roles, the JSC agreed with the judgment of the journalists. But it did not say that it disagreed with Mrs. Bashir, either, a situation which, were I running any news organization, I would test on her first day in Kuje by sending a reporter to sit where she cannot miss him in her new courtroom.
Certainly, Mrs. Bashir acted with a very poor sense of judgment. She must have known, from the day that she said the press lied about her, but especially the day she saw that the bankers’ case had been assigned to her, that journalists would show up in her courtroom. She did not compose herself, and failed to act professionally.
What she needs is not Kuje, and this is where the JSC, I hope, will go beyond the din of the nation’s screaming journalists. Mrs. Bashir did not become a magistrate by being a fool, but she did become unprofessional by permitting such anger and misuse of power last Monday. She ought to take an anger management course. That will help her, and help our nation to get the best out of her during her prime years as a judge.
But it is the journalism trade, not Mrs. Bashir, which has the most to gain from the judge’s unfortunate affray. By that, I do not mean the gloating pleasure of seeing her shunted to Kuje without a return bus ticket, but the challenge of greater credibility. We must report more thoroughly and comment more fairly.
Mrs. Bashir is obviously an emotionally-dented woman. That does not make her a bad person. Her accusation was poorly phrased and her vengeance wrongly executed, but her basic charge is that the media reported “falsehood” against her. While there is no excuse for her conduct, does she have a case? Was the story to which she alluded reported thoroughly, authoritatively and completely?
Before any members of the mass media start to gloat, they must take a hard look at the state of their trade. I read many Nigerian newspapers that startlingly appear to have been written by passers-by, not journalists. Some newspapers are littered with such one-sided stories you wonder if the people responsible for them actually went to work. Some stories are so unprofessionally investigated you wonder where the professionals were drinking their beer when they were being smuggled into print.
Many stories, were they fruits or plants, would not be eaten because they are unripe; but we publish them anyway, days or weeks before they actually mature. The most irresponsible of our professional behaviour is that most of our journalists do not seem to believe in following-up a story, no matter how much the story screams for it. This means we have no sense of history: a follow-up is as important to a story as it is in an interview, and I often read interviews in which critical questions are left to dangle.
The point is that as crazy as Mrs. Bashir may have sounded in last week’s assault on journalists, she was saying something we must not dismiss. She may well have been set off by what appeared to her to be an entire profession that was armed against her, but anyone who has ever been misrepresented by the press knows the agony and the pain.
As “related” as I am to the press, there have been instances where a journalist ignored me as he moved on to the next story. That means there are people out there who, not being “relatives” of the mass media, are trampled upon by the thundering herd of our irresponsibility. That means that, in their own way, journalists may be the most fearsome “Kill and Go” of all.
Mrs. Bashir’s outburst must therefore be considered to be far more important than Mrs. Bashir. It is a reminder of the weaknesses of a vital profession that has yet to reform itself. It is a reminder of the deep dark secret in the trade that lurks in the dark shadows of our incompetence, corruption, and malice.
The Nigerian media is dominated by people for whom a news organ provides the most convenient investment of all. With one additional title of “Publisher,” they are able to achieve a world of ineffable objectives: launder money, arm themselves with a vital instrument of influence and blackmail, and take out of professional circulation journalists who might otherwise have been critics or enemies.
What this means is that their responsibility is neither to the reader nor to the fidelity of the story. In other words, when a journal is owned by such an investor, his loyalty is not to ethics, any ethics, but to his narrow interests. That is exactly why innocent people can get trampled upon.
But it is the responsibility of the journalist to be conscious not of the judgment of an Abuja judge, but of History. It is the challenge of the journalist not to be flattered by the immediate gratification of a charlatan publisher or of an Abuja JSC, but of History. The only defence of the work of a journalist, long after he is gone, is the truth which no further investigation can impugn.
Today, the term, “Nigerian journalist,” is often deployed derogatorily. It is easy to attribute that to the machinations of “enemies of the press,” such as Mrs. Bashir, rather than to the sins of the journalist. But it is of such arrogance that the journalist must be the most wary, in order to avoid being handcuffed not through the negligible passions of a judge or a reader, but by Tomorrow.
• [email protected]
But for one moment that morning, Mrs. Bashir was somewhat less than magisterial. She was, you might say, blinded by a bolt of rage as she “discovered” the aliens in her esteemed courtroom. She ordered them out.
“I have a strong hatred for journalists,” she said in running soliloquy. “I had a bitter experience with them before. They have never been my friend and I have nothing to do with them now and in the future. No journalist can claim to be my friend.”
I can almost see her casting her superior gaze around her estate. “Where are the journalists?” she asked her court assistant. “Fish them out, they should leave my court immediately.”
I was not there, but I imagine she must have allowed a wink of time here, and then another. “If you are a journalist, leave my court room,” she is alleged to have continued. “What are you people doing here? What do you want here? It is not allowed. That was how you people messed me up three years ago by reporting falsehood against me. If you are a journalist, leave my court.”
It would seem that Lemmy Uhegbe, a reporter from The Guardian, is a little hard of hearing. Or may be he had enjoyed a heavy breakfast and was a little sluggish of limb. In any event, he seemed to have failed to answer the warning promptly. The angry judge had clearly used a hunting metaphor, “fish them out,” in her instructions.
In an event as frenetic as a N7.5 billion trial against top bankers, journalists are easy to spot. Although they are competitors, journalists hunt in packs at such occasions. In the drama in Mrs. Bashir’s courtroom, the first surprise is that the journalists agreed to be shooed out.
Mr. Uhegbe, it also appears, is a determined man. But he was eventually fished out. “Your Worship,” he appealed to the bench, “we are here to perform our constitutionally-guaranteed duty of covering the court’s proceedings.”
Mrs. Bashir, unable to believe there was actually a fifth columnist left in her court room, turned to her court assistant and wanted to know why there was yet one of the dregs of society left in there. “They are in disguise,” the orderly pleaded, conjuring images of spies in beards, make-up and masks, “I couldn’t identify them.”
Mrs. Bashir did not buy that one. “Police,” she ordered, “get him. Handcuff him and take him to prison. Tomorrow, I will listen to contempt charge against him…Let me teach (journalists) a lesson.”
Thus, instead of reporting suspects in handcuffs, Mr. Ughegbe found himself in handcuffs. They were soon later taken off when Mr. Ughegbe’s colleagues threatened civil disobedience, but I am sure one of his colleagues got a picture of him in his moment of agony. That picture will surface, someday.
Within two days, the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) in the Federal Capital Territory transferred the offending magistrate to Kuje Magistrate Court. That reaction followed protests from the Abuja Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, which asked for Mrs. Bashir to be sent to a job “where her emotional capacity will not be tasked leading to her becoming a threat to the public and those that come before her court.”
In a reversal of roles, the JSC agreed with the judgment of the journalists. But it did not say that it disagreed with Mrs. Bashir, either, a situation which, were I running any news organization, I would test on her first day in Kuje by sending a reporter to sit where she cannot miss him in her new courtroom.
Certainly, Mrs. Bashir acted with a very poor sense of judgment. She must have known, from the day that she said the press lied about her, but especially the day she saw that the bankers’ case had been assigned to her, that journalists would show up in her courtroom. She did not compose herself, and failed to act professionally.
What she needs is not Kuje, and this is where the JSC, I hope, will go beyond the din of the nation’s screaming journalists. Mrs. Bashir did not become a magistrate by being a fool, but she did become unprofessional by permitting such anger and misuse of power last Monday. She ought to take an anger management course. That will help her, and help our nation to get the best out of her during her prime years as a judge.
But it is the journalism trade, not Mrs. Bashir, which has the most to gain from the judge’s unfortunate affray. By that, I do not mean the gloating pleasure of seeing her shunted to Kuje without a return bus ticket, but the challenge of greater credibility. We must report more thoroughly and comment more fairly.
Mrs. Bashir is obviously an emotionally-dented woman. That does not make her a bad person. Her accusation was poorly phrased and her vengeance wrongly executed, but her basic charge is that the media reported “falsehood” against her. While there is no excuse for her conduct, does she have a case? Was the story to which she alluded reported thoroughly, authoritatively and completely?
Before any members of the mass media start to gloat, they must take a hard look at the state of their trade. I read many Nigerian newspapers that startlingly appear to have been written by passers-by, not journalists. Some newspapers are littered with such one-sided stories you wonder if the people responsible for them actually went to work. Some stories are so unprofessionally investigated you wonder where the professionals were drinking their beer when they were being smuggled into print.
Many stories, were they fruits or plants, would not be eaten because they are unripe; but we publish them anyway, days or weeks before they actually mature. The most irresponsible of our professional behaviour is that most of our journalists do not seem to believe in following-up a story, no matter how much the story screams for it. This means we have no sense of history: a follow-up is as important to a story as it is in an interview, and I often read interviews in which critical questions are left to dangle.
The point is that as crazy as Mrs. Bashir may have sounded in last week’s assault on journalists, she was saying something we must not dismiss. She may well have been set off by what appeared to her to be an entire profession that was armed against her, but anyone who has ever been misrepresented by the press knows the agony and the pain.
As “related” as I am to the press, there have been instances where a journalist ignored me as he moved on to the next story. That means there are people out there who, not being “relatives” of the mass media, are trampled upon by the thundering herd of our irresponsibility. That means that, in their own way, journalists may be the most fearsome “Kill and Go” of all.
Mrs. Bashir’s outburst must therefore be considered to be far more important than Mrs. Bashir. It is a reminder of the weaknesses of a vital profession that has yet to reform itself. It is a reminder of the deep dark secret in the trade that lurks in the dark shadows of our incompetence, corruption, and malice.
The Nigerian media is dominated by people for whom a news organ provides the most convenient investment of all. With one additional title of “Publisher,” they are able to achieve a world of ineffable objectives: launder money, arm themselves with a vital instrument of influence and blackmail, and take out of professional circulation journalists who might otherwise have been critics or enemies.
What this means is that their responsibility is neither to the reader nor to the fidelity of the story. In other words, when a journal is owned by such an investor, his loyalty is not to ethics, any ethics, but to his narrow interests. That is exactly why innocent people can get trampled upon.
But it is the responsibility of the journalist to be conscious not of the judgment of an Abuja judge, but of History. It is the challenge of the journalist not to be flattered by the immediate gratification of a charlatan publisher or of an Abuja JSC, but of History. The only defence of the work of a journalist, long after he is gone, is the truth which no further investigation can impugn.
Today, the term, “Nigerian journalist,” is often deployed derogatorily. It is easy to attribute that to the machinations of “enemies of the press,” such as Mrs. Bashir, rather than to the sins of the journalist. But it is of such arrogance that the journalist must be the most wary, in order to avoid being handcuffed not through the negligible passions of a judge or a reader, but by Tomorrow.
• [email protected]
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