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Wanted: War Correspondents - Sonala Olumhense by OlaSpeaker(m): 8:13pm On Sep 20, 2015 |
IF you are merely a highly casual observer of
events, you may not even have noticed the war.
One explanation is probably that your news
medium does not know, either. That tells you how
serious, but exciting, this war is going to be.
Reporting a war is unlike reporting education,
government or the National Assembly. Compared
to war reporting, those are like writing a blog: you
can (almost) sit on your recliner—your television
remote control in the other hand—and do it.
To report a war, you need War Correspondents:
citizens of courage who understand the
dimensions of trying to share the dimensions of a
conflict with the larger world. They also know that
the blood that is shed is not always that of the
enemy.
A war correspondent does not make you accept a
war; he makes you understand its essence. He
understands that the war is too important to be left
to the soldiers. A war correspondent serves the
war with the dinner, if there is one.
The war correspondent is the missing element of
the coming war, and we must have him if we are to
understand its sweet savagery enough to swear,
on behalf of our children, “Never again!”
I am talking about Nigeria’s anti-corruption war,
and never again the false peace which preceded it.
But a true war is dangerous if it lacks historians
dedicated enough to interpret and document it.
To be clear: sometimes, war correspondents do
not come back. I don’t mean physically, but
psychologically. A war needs men and women who
have that special capacity that is beyond casualty-
counting. A war takes its toll, but the reason why
some war correspondents appear to have been lost
in the war relates as much to its dimensions and
nuances as to the actual fighting.
Nigeria, corruption: these two words have
occupied the same headlines and sentences for so
long they seem to be Siamese twins.
Now, for the first time, they get inserted between
them, in practice, the smaller one, war.
The word is small until you think about it, or
remember that the war has been described as one
for the soul of the nation. This is a three-
dimensional one that has no real boundaries. No, it
is not about the Goodluck Jonathan administration;
no, it is not about people who have served in
public office; and no, it is not about who is alive
and who is dead.
Think: if you are a Nigerian, and you have held
public office, you are in the fight, somewhere, even
though it may not at first appear to involve you. A
war correspondent may call, or connect you.
If you are a Nigerian and have held no public office
but are related to someone who has, you are in it,
somehow.
If you are a Nigerian and have held no public
office, but have worked in a public office or
serviced such an office, you are in it, somehow.
If you are not a Nigerian but have worked in official
proximity to a Nigerian official or office, you are in
it, somehow.
If you have worked in a state or local government
capacity but have retired or become incapacitated,
a war correspondent may call you on account of
documents received from a certain federal
pensioner in your area.
Think about it: a pardoned convict, former Bayelsa
State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha (DSP), is
currently on a campaign of self-vindication. In
press interviews, the man who reportedly fled the
United Kingdom in a woman’s buba, gele and
high-heels blames his impeachment and
conviction not on his corruption, but on a
conspiracy led by President Olusegun Obasanjo.
DSP does say anything about his corruption issues
with the Metropolitan Police in London, or how he
imagines they were recruited into the conspiracy,
or about his assets in the United States that were
subsequently seized by that country.
What if those UK and US issues seeped back into
the war, and a war correspondent called Mr.
Goodluck Jonathan—who as President not only
refused to claim DSP’s assets offered to Nigeria
but pardoned the man—and Jonathan called
Mohammed Adoke, who was his Attorney General?
Think about it: if they probed the Abacha loot saga,
Olusegun Obasanjo is certain to testify; he has
said he left $2bn, £100m and N10bn in cash and
property of Abacha’s money when he left office in
2007. That means they will call Ngozi Okonjo-
Iweala, who has said that government recovered
only $500m; and her successor in the Ministry of
Finance (2006), Nenadi Usman, who said five
Ministries received the funds for 50 projects. This
means war correspondents can call a lot of people
involved with a lot of offices and funds and
projects.
Projects: If they probed the Second Niger Bridge,
the East-West Highway, or the Transformation
Agenda, Pandora’s Box?
And if they probed Wale Babalakin and his Bi-
Courtney Consortium over the Lagos-Ibadan
Expressway, would Jonathan’s Works Minister Mike
Onolememen and his staff be called by war
correspondents? If they probed the Sagamu-Benin
Road, would recent Works Ministers from Tony
Anenih through Adeseye Ogunlewe to Onolememen
testify?
If they probed Patience Jonathan’s $13.5 million
EFCC 2006 seizure, will a war correspondent call
former boss Nuhu Ribadu, who announced her
“clearance” years after he had left the commission?
Think: Senate President Bukola Saraki, who has
enjoyed hide-and-seek games with law-
enforcement since his governorship of Kwara State
ended in 2011, has finally been charged by the
Code of Conduct Bureau. As soon as he heard the
charges against him, Saraki—like DSP—declared
them to be a witch-hunt.
That is particularly interesting when you remember
that the Senate, Saraki’s playpen, recently claimed
to be probing EFCC chairman Ibrahim Lamorde for
allegedly diverting a trailer load of recovered funds,
over N1 trillion’s worth.
It is also significant that the CCB is after Saraki for
crimes allegedly committed between 2003 and
2011. The same agency has conveniently ignored
as many as 14 former governors recommended to
it by a 2006 federal Joint Task Force for
prosecution. The ICPC, which treats blindness with
eye drops, is also now conveniently looking into
the finances of (some) former governors.
Think: what if they investigated military and
security chiefs who supervised various Houdini and
whodunit budgets; Ministers who financed beyond
Ministries; and former governors who claimed to
have no accounts overseas but who somehow
managed to own property before and during their
governorships?
Yes, thunder is rumbling in the distance, but an
anti-corruption offensive has not begun. If that
happens, the anti-corruption outfits, despite their
activism, can expect to play as much defence as
prosecution. If there is a war, they can win
legitimacy not simply from the authority of the law,
but from their record.
But the war, if it comes, will be the province of the
“war correspondent.”
That is what I call every citizen who acknowledges
it as the chance of a lifetime. It will be an intricate,
intertwined and complicated process, but a contact
sport in which, by participating robustly but fairly,
the ordinary citizen can determine his future.
www.ngrguardiannews.com/2015/09/wanted-war-correspondents/ |
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