A former member of the House of Representatives and one time national president of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Honourable Sani Zorro hosted the Muslim News Nigeria crew led by its publisher, Rasheed Abubakar at his Garki, Abuja office early this week, where he spoke exclusively on the age long Nigerian media deliberate misinformation about Islam.
Hon. Zorro, who is an indigene of Jigawa state, revealed how the non-Muslim journalists have politicised the newsrooms in favour of their religion over Islam. He also described the now rested Concord newspaper, founded by the late MKO Abiola, as a game changer that survived without adverts from alcohol and cigarette companies.
In the interview that lasted 2 hours, the passionate Muslim pen-pusher expressed his strong belief that Muslim News, Nigeria’s most authoritative Islamic newspaper, as a specialised media, will help in overcoming misrepresentation if it is supported by the Muslims.
The Conclusion….
MN: Was it that Muslims at that time did not have qualifications to become heads in a medium owned by the late MKO Abiola?
No, it is not that they didn’t have the qualifications. These were national newspapers that Chief Abiola promoted, and there was need to ensure that the recruitment policy prioritizes competence. The setting up of Concord itself was by our elder, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, who is a Christian and later went on to set up Daily Champions. There was a need for balance.
But I can agree with you that maybe at that time, there wasn’t enough Muslim professionals who could fit in to becoming editors and so on. Otherwise, journalism profession in Nigeria had brought on board Muslims who actually made history and shaped the evolution of Nigerian media. I am talking about the late Alhaji Babatunde Jose, late Alhaji Alade Odunewu popularly known as Allah Dey. Latter day generation had the late Alhaji Animashaun Kola, and quite a number have actually shaped the evolution of the Nigerian media in that part of the country.
Of course, in the Northern part of the country, we (Muslims) dominated. The only difference is that we are strong in terms of electronic media, especially radio because it is a radio society. Having said that, Concord actually demonstrated the kind of fairness not only in terms of employment, but also in terms of remunerations, general welfare, and of course, interpersonal relationships. If you went to Concord, there wasn’t this clear-cut division into Muslims and Christians. Everyone was committed to doing his own work and delivering on the job. That’s the most important thing. May Allah continue to bless Chief MKO Abiola, founder of the publication. He was vast in Christianity. He attended Baptist school. So, he knew probably more about Christian ethos than Islam itself. He contributed a lot as he was the single most influential Nigerian that I knew who built churches and mosques. He was such a colossus business man. We didn’t know about the Dangote, Femi Otedola, etc. When you talk of business, you talk of Chief MKO Abiola. He was first in business; we didn’t know of other persons.
Chief Abiola was not only president of ITT in Africa and the Middle East, he was the one that started the campaign for reparation – wherein Europeans were made to pay for the slave trade which ran for 300 years when they were cheating Black Africans to build their industrialized society that time and farm in their plantations and others in Latin America and other parts of the world. He was such a great man and we are very proud that he was a Muslim.
He was not an ordinary Muslim, he was a believer. Not that he was flouting Islam in everything he did as far as I am concerned, because it was always said that all he had was God’s pleasure to test him whether he was going to abide by the commandments of Allah or not. So, we are proud of him, and that’s why some of us who worked with him in the Concord newspaper speak with emotions and with a sense of loss.
In today’s Nigeria, we have no such media like the Concord because the narratives have changed. It is conspicuously clear that they deliberately write against Islam. I have no contradictions to say this. I am a Nigerian, I also want Nigeria to survive. Everywhere you go, you see an example of how the Muslim media is actually apparently non-existent compared to the rise of Christian ones. There is no doubt about the fact that Christianity, most especially in the Southwest is having good times in Nigeria. I don’t blame them.
If you look at the billboards, anywhere in any part of this country, you see them advertising a pastor and his wife; a priest here in Abuja holds all sort of prayer sessions in the hotel and everywhere. The Christian pastors own jets that are expensive. Some of them own more than two jets. They own properties. Out of this world, churches have representations. It is a huge index, and when it comes to the media, you discover that they sponsor programmes every now and then. My fear is that if it were Muslims that are doing a quarter of these activities, there would have been complaints.
MN: Some sections of the Nigeria populace have been accusing this government of Islamisation Agenda. What’s your take on this?
It is a political blackmail, and we should continue to expose them in the little spaces that we have. When you talk of Islamization Agenda, what is Islamization agenda? I have seen quite a number of them who are supposed to be conscionable, but so many of them lack conscience to have even brought those kind of information with which they mislead people. They talk about appointment under president Buhari for instance. They say the Army Chief and so on are Muslims. Does that, as an enlightened Nigerian, represent Islamization? But if you check very well, you will discover that there are more Christians in the administration.
I am not holding brief for Buhari. Buhari has his own spokesperson. I am not his staff. He is not paying me. I have no relationship with him whatsoever. I am a reporter, a self-fulfilled reporter for that matter, trained to be objective as possible, and that’s what I think I am doing. It is unfortunate that some of us have even found ourselves in the position where we are making cases for government. I don’t do that at all. That Islamization Agenda is bunkum. It is a deliberate mischief that has been exposed and deconstructed in many media outlets by people who respond to them.
But you know because it is a deliberate act of lying in order to blackmail Islam, that’s why they continue to ram it into the minds of ignorant followers; and maybe they believe them. The danger in that is that if you fuel religious politics with those kind of hate, it can inflame and consume everybody. Look at what is happening in India. The Indian government, everybody knows is a deliberate Hindu administration, and their policies are against Islam. Look at how they are mooing Muslims all over the place. When I woke up this morning (February), it was to the news that they have sacked a judge who just said “Investigate what happened in Delhi yesterday because so many Muslims’ shops have been razed”.
It was just a callous something simply because Muslims protested about something that is so controversial; the law that allows no Muslim to be assimilated as Indian nationals from Bangladesh, Pakistan and other places; while Muslims are blocked completely, they cannot come in as Muslims. This is discriminatory. So, the Muslims who feel very hard about it decided to protest. Protestations – taking to the streets to demonstrate – is part of democratic practices with antecedents. Anybody that tells you democracy starts and finishes with elections and instalment of leaders does not know what democracy is all about.
The democrats in leadership must allow for views to contend and to contest. That means you must allow opposing views. You must allow people into the streets to go and occupy the National Assembly to show placards; to go to the government house. That’s what the Hide Park in London is probably best known for. People go there to demonstrate from morning till evening. Some of them mount protest for one year. These are parts of what must be respected.
Simply because there is insurgency in the North Eastern part of Nigeria, and the people who drive the insurgency claim to be Muslims does not make Islam terroristic. They are not representing me. They are not representing the Sultan. They are not representing any symbol of Islam. So, what does that have to do with Islam? It is the same Muslim Army Chief that is fighting them and they are killing Muslims.
These people out of mischief just single out deaths that have to do with Christians to show that it is Christians that are being decimated. They are not even ashamed to go out of the country to say all those bunkums. The last time around, they were at the British Parliament. They were disgraced. Maybe the Nigerian media didn’t want to report this, but I know for one that the kind of lies they went to tell there. The British Parliamentarians that were better informed told them Muslims are also killed; they must look at the pictures.
They came back with their tales that were neither here nor there. The North Eastern part of the country as well as the North Central part of the country are mixed communities. There are places in Southern Borno, Adamawa and Taraba states where, just like the Southwest, you have a family consisting of Muslims and Christians. Before, there used to be Muslims, Christians and pagans or traditional worshippers. That’s how they are co-existing. So, how can Boko Haram, for instance, be targeting only Christians when they are fighting everybody? They raze down churches, mosques, and other objects there. That’s the truth of the matter.
But you see, they ignored it deliberately, and the crisis is being underreported intentionally. We think it is a problem that has to go with a section of the country. Let me tell you the danger in this narrow perspective. For example, if Lagosians or people from the Coastal South think Boko Haram is not their problem, there is another problem. Only three days ago, terrorists struck in Cotonou, and it is a Coastal city. So, if they can strike in Cotonou, it means they can strike at anywhere on the West coast.
I remember when our elder, Alhaji Lateef Jakande – who was one of those who built the journalism profession by establishing the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) which trained all of us; and his John West Press and other things he has been able to do – aspired to become the president of Nigeria in 1991, I think when the coast was clear under one of these Babangida’s experiments, I stumbled on his agenda, and the first item was that he was going to arrest desertification in the North. Funny enough, people in Lagos started saying he was a Northerner; a Nupe man. When we went to see Alhaji, he said “You see my people, the way people in Lagos suffer from ignorance because they are from a highly blessed place, a cosmopolitan place where everything is; so you don’t need to go outside to buy because everything is in Lagos. When you wake up, when you are born in Meko where there are skyscrapers or Broad Street in Marina where you see big ships and so on; you are a Lagos boy. You are not a bush man.
“There are restaurants, you see white people, there are hotels, you see everything. You don’t even need to go to Ikeja, everything is there, banks, everything. The same thing when you are in New York or Cairo. You get trapped in that kind of environment”. But you know the explanation of Alhaji? He said if you do not arrest desertification from the North, the rate at which it is eating into Nigerian territory, one day it will come to the Coastal area; so, my vision is to see that it is arrested before it comes to the Coastal area. It will come one day.
Today, the effects of climate change are very devastating. Look at Coronavirus. Some people were saying God used it to punish the Chinese for coming to colonize us and so on. It has now spread to 44 countries in Europe (as at February); and everybody is in panic. We must learn, as human beings, one of the laws of human nature, most especially, Islam in this case. I knew about the dictum as a Muslim, I was taught the Hadith that says no one is a true Muslim except he likes for others what he likes for himself. You must be as selfless as possible.
If there is a human tragedy anywhere, we must make sure that as human beings, we share in the tragedy. If there is something that is a source of happiness for humankind, whether it has affected the Aalul- Kitab (Christians and Jews) or not, we must share in their happiness. That is the commandment of Allah. That’s my understanding. I think the religion that professes such fine point of co-existence, talking about peace and so on, is apt.
MN: Talking about branding of Boko Haram jihadists and Islamists, what did you do during your tenure as the NUJ National President to curb this irresponsible journalism among its members just to tarnish another religion? It works in some countries, for instance, the UK MPs moved a motion that British media should stop calling IS Islamic State. They are simply terrorist. What is your take on this sir?
Journalism is an aggregator because it aggregates the opinions of the people. Journalism tries to give you the reality of what is happening because the journalists use a lot of instruments to measure as accurately as possible the verisimilitude of a story. You now brand, aggregate and make a particular scenario or phenomenon that would be acceptable. The journalist is also a wordsmith. Something that is trending and has no name; we can give it a name and it goes into the dictionary like fake news and so on.
As far as this branding is concerned, I think there is confusion in the Nigerian media. Now, because of the extent of partisanship, the insurgents in the North Eastern part of the country are branded as terrorists. But those who started the armed campaign against the Nigerian state in the so called Niger Delta in the South-South are called militants. What do you mean?
If you take an arm against the state, that means you are not a state actor. You are not licensed under international law to bear arms, only the soldiers or other state formations are allowed to carry arms, and that’s what constitute the state. So, if you are no state actor, you are either a terrorist or waging an insurrection against the Nigerian state, those ones are militants. The ones in the Northeast who kill and maim people are called bandits.
I think we are not sufficiently knowledgeable about what is happening in these places. In fact, we are also copying the words. It is just a copy and paste syndrome; the words used by the international media, we are greatly influenced by it. For instance, those who take up arms insofar they are Muslims, in Western media, they are branded as Muslim terrorists. But there is no other terrorists except Muslim terrorists. Why?
This thing is political also. You remember very well with the decolonization in Southern Africa that time where Southern African states were the last batch to decolonize, we had a lot of fights between African leaders and their European counterparts at meetings of African Union, United Nations and so on. While the West, Margaret Thatcher and so many of them considered ANC, Nelson Mandela and the rest of them as terrorists, we Africans and African leaders collaborated with them and called them freedom fighters and their parties, liberation parties. What they were doing was liberation in order to kick out those who were dominating them in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Angola and Mozambique and some other countries that were under colonial rule at that time.
The Western media also took sides because they were branding them as terrorists; while we were calling them freedom fighters. Same thing with the Arab world. While Israel and the West see the Palestinians as terrorists and their media also calls them terrorists, a lot of Arabs see them as freedom fighters, and their movements are seen as liberation movements. In Latin America, it was the same thing.
So, we in Nigeria, I think in the Nigerian media, just like our elite politicians, we lack consensus. There is no consensus, otherwise, this thing is beyond the Nigerian Union of Journalists. It is beyond individual media, the problem rests with the elites. Everyone wants to look at this sect of people and what they are doing. How do we look at them? Do people have the rights to keep on destroying pipelines simply because they said the oil is naturally located in their own land? But we clap for them and say it is not terrorism but militancy because the oil is naturally endowed in their land. At the end of it, we may have war at all fronts.
The South West people may stand up and say this thing is our property. The coast, water, everything is in Yoruba land and cannot be shared by everybody. That doesn’t make sense. Maybe the Northerners would say we own the farmlands that grow tomatoes. Are they the ones that will eat up the tomatoes and the food items? So, I think the basic underlining thing is correct leadership, be it Muslims, Christians or people who are irreligious, insofar we get justice because Islam is just concerned about justice.
We as Muslims and more importantly Muslim journalists shouldn’t be asking for what we do not deserve. We are just asking for justice.
Wherever Islam and other rival religions come to play, let there be justice in the distribution of appointments whether elective or appointive. In representation in the media, if you give a pastor front page coverage because of what he has said or has led a demonstration, you must also accord the same space to a leader of JNI or NSCIA.
(Cuts-in) They always claim that the leaders of JNI will not sell their papers but the CAN leadership will do…
That means, we are now pandering towards market forces, not journalism for both. That’s why the Muslims in the South West keep on complaining, the latest of which is over Amotekun. They went to Osun State to address a press conference to express their fears, for instance, that in the criteria put up for Amotekun, you must show recommendations or birth certificate from the church. Why? Why didn’t they ask for birth certificate from mosque?
I have seen quite a number of outcries where Muslims either represented by MURIC or others. What is happening in Ekiti State for instance where the governor is a Christian, deputy governor is a Christian, Head of Service is a Christian and others. There is no representation of Muslims. Since we are now talking about media, let these things be in the media without emotions.
But you discover that people who publish or edit the newspapers will not allow such views to be used in their media which is very unfortunate because it breaches professional ethics which requires balance. Journalism is built around balance and fairness. That’s what it is.
MN: Your advice for Muslim Media Practitioners?
Under normal circumstance, honestly speaking as a Nigerian patriot who does not believe in division and fragmentation, I do not tend to support associations championing primordial or even religious causes. But these things have been forced on us. There is a Christian Journalist Association. They also have Journalists for Christ, etc.
I think the best deal that we can get is to continue to strive to uplift the activities of the association, propagate what Islam is all about and disapprove what it is not as far as we are concerned. We are in a very turbulent world. The 21st century has spelt doom for the entire world. The revolution in ICT even though a blessing to humankind has caused a lot of destruction because it is a medium of exchanging news, views and carrying propaganda, fake news and what have you.
We need to ask Muslims to invest more in digital education that will enable us separate the truths from untruths. I appeal to our brothers who are not subscribers of Islamic faith not to take and swallow hook, line and sinker whatever is said about Islam because they can verify whatever is said from their neighbours. We should be confident and lead by example. Those Muslims in top positions in the media must make it a duty to ensure that Islam is not misrepresented and Muslims are given fair hearing. There must be justice for everyone, not only for the Muslims, but for everyone across board. It is a costly demand though.
▪︎ Interview by Rasheed Abubakar | Photographer: AbdulWaheed Adenyi
In case you missed Part 1, read it below