RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM: It is over!

By Joseph Edgar….

It is so sad that people like Segun Osoba, Ray Ekpu and Dan Agbese are still alive to witness the violent death of responsible journalism in our clime. These great men witnessed the golden era in our journalism, a profession that once paved the way to self-determination by a conquered people.

Today, what we see and aided by an unbridled spontaneity of the social media is arrant madness couched with smelly garbs of errant reporting, championed by a platform that has thrown the very ethics of the profession, which gave birth to the glittering legacies of such mighty soldiers like the legendary Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, the erudite Babatunde Jose and Mike Enahoro who moved the motion for self-determination, thrown to the smelly gutters of rumour mongering.

Today, we have been fed once again with the bile that is the sole responsibility of this platform that has erroneously named itself after a glittering geographical landmark which spreads across west and north African landscape but has poured acidic venom over that name with its version of puerile and devilish journalism.

So, today a picture of the Senate President with his wife in a personal gaily function is published with an arrow marking out a gentleman. The dark skinned gentle man is said to be one of the robbers that raided the sleepy Offa town and killed 53 innocent people. This according to them, was to prove the intimacy between the Senate President and the gang in an attempt to give credibility to the very funny ‘invitation’ sent to the Senate President on the matter.

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The picture, as is usually the case with things like these in a society of near literate but politically interested masses, went virile. The poor gentle man was thrown up without his consent and knowledge through a muddy path strewn with evil and dastardly machinations by simian oligarchs. Imbeciles with nothing but access to the unfettered power that comes with social media.

I happen to know the gentleman. I happen to have spent many times with him discussing the issues that pervade this country, many times I have left him in tears as he speaks about the daily sufferings of our people, the dearth in leadership on all sides and the inability of the masses to decide for themselves their fate and destiny. This is the same person that is being paraded in such a manner that depicts the very depths of depravity.

In writing this piece, I reached out to him and in his very calm and usual jovial manner asked me when was the next operation and that he needed a gateway driver. We both laughed at the stupidity of the gargoyles who temporarily control the gates to social media even as he restated his commitment to a better Nigeria.

He remains a patriot who has not lost sleep. He remains committed to a better country. A country where principled and committed leadership will once again arise from the ashes of damnation to lead us through the path of righteousness and into a new beginning.

For the purveyors of falsehood, I leave them with the sayings of the great Bola Ige, ‘I siddon look’.

 

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