2023: Time to decolonise the press, Nigeria (2)

• Published date: 12 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

Humanity thrives as political theatre. And Nigeria offers one big stage on which we are entertained, informed, and misinformed. The process, in recent times, assumes the course of indoctrination by courtiers.

The latter manifests as our most malignant affliction. Comprising journalists, politicians, NGOs, and various forms of rights activists, their presence and machinations are inimical to nationhood, individuality, and self-growth, ultimately because they are deployed as weapons of programming.

This may no doubt resonate as far-fetched to individuals and groups profiting from the status quo, especially the press and civil societies.

Yet for a people programmed for conquest, Nigerians carry on with unabashed ignorance and arrogance. Arrogance is pitiable. Ignorance is expensive and quite scary.

But Nigeria carries on, unperturbed by the ramifications of it all. This is what happens when a nation becomes unmoored from reality; it retreats into a fictive nirvana. In this predetermined cosmology, reality is redefined to suit dubious whim, and facts are manufactured, acknowledged, and disputed to suit relative bias.

If Nigeria seems unmoored from reality, it's because our lives and national discourse are dominated by fabricated events; from exaggerated grief over insecurity, misgovernance, and national disasters to celebrity gossip and pageantry of political artifice, the country is sold to desperate narratives at home and abroad.

Whether it is Boko Haram or armed bandits' resonant creed of violence and wanton genocide among brainwashed minors or the virulent manifestations of partisan politics, the compelling nature of the grievances articulated, and the pervasiveness of despair are wielded to justify the rationale for Nigeria's creed of carnage and the country's enduring portrayal as a banana republic by foreign governments and consulates.

A history of corruption and neglect at the federal, state, and local levels of government, among others, has equally morphed into a major source of widespread dissatisfaction towards politicians, the legal system, and law enforcement by the masses.

These sentiments thrive in greater depths across geographic and virtual space; as Nigeria prepares for the February 2023 polls, a wave of validation and reproof of the incumbent political class and the opposition seeking to dislodge it has produced a supercharged atmosphere of warring critics and apologists.

Of the latter, the majority parade flawed presence because they have no real...