Media chieftains protest the plot to gag the Nigerian press through an obnoxious bill now before the National Assembly

      But if the press expected a pat on the back for a battle well fought from the political class through the enactment of media friendly legislations like the Freedom of Information Bill, FoIB, they were mistaken. Ten years after the enthronement of democracy, the National Assembly is in a process of rewarding the press with a law that will repeal the Nigeria Press Council Act and establish the Nigerian Press and Practice of Journalism Council, NPPJC, a  gift many discerning people have viewed as poisoned chalice.

     The NPPJC, according to Abike Dabiri-Erewa, a member of the House of Representatives and sponsor of the bill, would promote high professional standards for the Nigerian press and deal with complaints emanating from members of the public about the conduct of journalists and media houses in their professional capacity. The council would also hear complaints from the press about the conduct of persons, organisations or institutions of government toward its members and institutions. Dabir-Erewa, who is an ex-staff the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, is a member of the Action Congress, AC, that prides itself as a liberal democratic and progressive opposition political party.

     If the bill is passed as proposed, the teaching and practice of journalism in the country would be superintended by NPPJC. The council will also have the power to approve a new code of professional and ethical conduct for journalists in the performance of their duties. The council will be charged with receiving application from, and documenting (a euphemism for licencing) the print media and monitoring their performances to ensure that owners and publishers remain true with the terms of their mission statements and objectives in order to foster “the achievement and maintaining high professional standards by the press.”

    Furthermore, the council is empowered to register and maintain a list of registered and accredited journalists and news vendors. It is also invested with the power to create the Media Practitioner Complaint Commission, MPCC, that would conduct inquiry and deliver judgements on complaints of aggrieved person on anything that were published in respect of him in any medium of information. Matters can only be brought to the council on appeal after the commission has heard the case. Offending media houses and journalists who do not comply with the council’s decisions will face suspension for six months.

     Section 26 of the proposed NPPJC bill states that: “a person shall not practice as a journalist in Nigeria unless he has passed the qualifying examinations as approved by the council” as well as “the prescribed professional examination of the Nigeria Union of Journalist.” In furtherance of this, the council will establish a National Examination and Accreditation Board “to conduct examination for the would-be journalists or graduates of Mass Communications in Nigeria in the Nigeria Institute of Journalism, NIJ.” Also, NIJ shall be mandated by the council to “organise a one-year professional programme for the training of graduates of mass communication.” This will place NIJ as the pre-eminent journalism institution in the country.

     The bill also arrogates the functions of the Nigeria University Commission and the National Board for Technical Education to the council by giving it the powers to accredit journalism departments, approve their course content and examine their graduates to certify their fitness to practice professional journalism.

     Moreover, the council may approve a course of training for persons who are seeking to become journalists or are journalists to confer on them sufficient knowledge and skill for the practice of journalism as a profession as provided in Section 20 of the bill.

      Other provisions of the bill stipulate that a person who has not attained the age of 25 years and has not served as a reporter in a reputable print or electronic media for a period of 10 years is not qualified to be an editor. It defines a reputable media organisation as one that has carried out its operation for five years without any interruption.

      It goes on to prescribe that journalists shall be placed on salaries, allowances, pensions and general conditions of services that are not less than 20 percent above those paid to staff in Federal and State Governments’ parastatals and private companies as the case may be. This is to ensure the independence, objectivity, impartiality and transparency of journalists in gathering and disseminating information. The agreed conditions of service would also be published in the Federal Gazette.

     The bill further required the publisher of a newspaper, magazine and journal to submit within 60 days after the end of the year a return on performance of the newspaper, magazine or journal to enable the council assess whether the medium has kept its mission statement and code of professional and ethical conduct in its discussion of issues of public importance. The bill also empowers the council to register and accredit news vendors and prescribe punishment either in fine or imprisonment for news vendors that circulate unregistered newspapers, magazines and journals amongst other provisions.

   However, media chiefs have viewed the bill with apprehension. Three days after the House of Representatives held a public hearing on the bill, the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria, NPAN, rejected the proposed press council in its entirety after an executive meeting it held on November 19, 2009. The association vowed not to have anything to do with the council.

      Ajibola Ogunshola, president of NPAN, said it is a sad commentary that the promoters of the bill have failed to learn from history. “What the colonialists tried to do but failed under the Newspaper Ordinance of 1903; what our own politicians tried to do in 1964 but failed; what the Buhari/Idiagbon regime and a succession of military dictatorships tried to do but all failed, is now being put forward again,” Ogunshola said. He urged the promoters of this bill to reflect a little and drink from the well of history in order to appreciate the futility of the bill.

     He said that NPAN recently demonstrated its awareness of the need to ensure higher ethical standards in the conduct of the press by establishing the Press Ombudsman that would deliver speedy and satisfactory remedies to complaints against the press. This self regulatory step was expected to deter the government from pressing on with the sort of nonsensical bill that is now before the House of Representatives. “Whatever mischievous impression anyone may try to give, a predatory government-appointed regulator can only make the operating environment more difficult for everyone in the industry, which will not be in the public interest," he said.

     Tony Momoh, lawyer and former minister of information, who attended the public hearing on the bill on November 16, warned on the futility of the goals the bill is set to achieve. He believed that the factors that frustrated previous attempts to set a press council since 1978 will derail the current exercise.

   Momoh, who is also the former editor and managing director of Daily Times, also pointed out that the power to make law affecting the press is neither on the exclusive nor on the concurrent legislative lists and, therefore, may not lie within the powers of the National Assembly. Rather, it is a residual matter that should better be left with the state legislative assembly to handle.  “Looking at the constitution strictly, the National Assembly has power to strengthen institutions that will promote access to information of public interest so that the monitoring role conferred on the media by the constitution could be enhanced. This is where an urgent preoccupation of the lawmakers should be the retrieval of the seemingly abandoned FoIB,” Momoh said, adding that since the media has taken a self regulatory measure of establishing the office of the press ombudsman, the co-operation in the operation of the bill if it becomes law would be doubtful.

     Yemi Ogunbiyi, executive chairman, Tanus Communications Limited, told Newswatch that the proposed bill is a terrible thing that should be condemned by all those who believe in the power of the press as the bedrock of democracy in any part of the world. “It is a regressive bill that is so nasty and obnoxious that I find it surprising that it is coming from someone who has a media background. It is all about how to muzzle the press. It is terrible,” Ogunbiyi said.

     He expressed the view that nothing more obnoxious has been attempted in the history of the Nigerian media to castrate the press than this bill, not even the dreaded Decrees 2 and 4 of 1984. “That is why I found this absolutely scary and I think that we should roundly condemn this bill,” he said.

    Ray Ekpu, chief executive officer, Newswatch Communications Limited, sees the bill as a silly and stupid proposal and promised to do battle with its proponent. “This is silly as far as I’m concerned. People have tried this kind of stupid legislation before and we fought against them. We will fight against this one and it will never see the light of the day," Ekpu said. 

     Some of the provisions of the bill Ekpu found loathsome include section 28(a) that said that “the council may approve for the purpose of section 20 of this act ‘a course of training which is intended for persons who are seeking to become or are journalists and which the council considers is designed to confer on persons completing it, sufficient knowledge and skill for the practice as members of the profession.”

     He interpreted the construction of this section to mean that nobody is qualified to practice journalism. “If you pass that bill into law it will mean that nobody is qualified to practice at this stage. So, every person is at ground zero. I think it is preposterous. How do you ask graduates of Mass Communications who might have gotten their bachelors, masters or PhD to go and take exams at NIJ in order to qualify to practice journalism? The whole thing does not make sense to me.”

    He said that the entire bill is full of holes and no responsible journalist or publisher would submit to such requirements like registration, documenting the media houses, rendation of annual report to the council, as well as the fixing of salaries of journalists at 20 percent minimum above the wages of those employed in government’s parastatals. “Which parastatal? Are they all paying the same salary? Is it the NNPC, NDDC or CBN? In any case what business do they have to fix the minimum wage which the government has already fixed for the country? This legislation is partisan and an indirect way of targeting against press freedom,” Ekpu said.

    In addition, Ekpu is concerned that the Federal Government in 2002 reneged on its promise to enact the Nigeria Press Council (Amendment) Act into law after all the stakeholders had signed the document on Friday, August 30, 2002. This took place after a marathon negotiation that lasted for more than two years. He recalled the assurances of Jerry Gana, professor of geography and minister of information at that time, that the proposed amended act would be sent to the Federal Executive Council from where it it would be taken to the National Assembly for enactment. That has not happened since 2002.

     Those who signed the proposed amendment were Remi Oyo, former, president of Nigeria Guild of Editors, Smart Adeyemi, former Nigeria Union of Journalists president, Taiwo Allimi, former Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria’s chairman, Alade Odunewu, former chairman of Nigeria Press Council, Gana, former minister of information and Ekpu, former president of NPAN.

     Odia Ofeimun, a poet and former editorial board chairman of The News and Tempo magazines, told Newswatch that the proposed bill is a precursor to government’s grand plan to crack down on the expression of dissenting opinions. The poet said that people need to look beyond Dabiri-Erewa to see both the security agents behind the bill and the powerful interest groups they represent, since security agencies do not fight for themselves.

      To him, three issues are at stake as far as the bill is concerned. They are corruption, power and regional arithmetic. According to him, a corrupt political class must always look for ways to gag the press from uncovering their unwholesome acts. While the regional arithmetic will be used to weed unwanted elements in the press and redress the perceived imbalance in the media industry. He said that what happened to many permanent secretaries who failed in recent federal civil service examination, would be the lot in the NPPJC’s examination.

          Lateef Kazeem, chairman, Newspapers and Magazines Distributors’ Association, NMDA, Ikeja Zone, told Newswatch that the motive behind the bill is to cage the press. He wished the government would appreciate the noble services the press is rendering to the nation in order to give them room to carry on with their profession without any let or hindrance.

 Reported by Ishaya Ibrahim.