1. Courage under Fire: A Review of Trials and Triumphs – The
Story of The News by Wale Adebanwi
By
‘Kayode Fayemi1
Chairman, Excellencies, Media Gurus, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen. We are here to
celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of a rare phenomenon in the annals of crusading
journalism in Africa – The News and its associated publications. Fifteen years is not exactly
a long time in the history of newsmagazines in Nigeria; and The News is certainly not the
oldest publication of its kind in the country. However, when one considers the mortality rate
of such publications and the context of birth of The News and its sister publication, the now
rested Tempo, both products conceived in the crucible of Nigeria‟s long and tortuous struggle
against military dictatorship and nurtured in suffocating uncertainty, every year spent in that
crucible is well worth celebrating.
A fitting emblem of this worthy celebration of courage under fire, high patriotism and
selfless nobility is the publication of Trials and Triumphs – The Story of The News – a
commissioned study of The News‟ history written by that rare breed in the atrophying
chamber of scholarship, Wale Adebanwi, the irreverent Bill Gates Fellow from Cambridge
University, United Kingdom. Naturally, detached academics are skeptical of sponsored
studies lest they be accused of hagiography rather than an objective study and Dr Adebanwi
reflects on this dilemma in his introduction to the book. While he shies away from the notion
of value neutrality in assessing The News, he did not shy away from pointing out the faults
and foibles, indeed the challenges of internal democracy in an institution that espouses clear
tenets of democracy and challenges all forms of injustice.
Dr Adebanwi has done our country - well known for its predilection of collective amnesia –
a huge favour by producing this wonderful work of political history and media studies.
Although it is not the first in the genre I have referred to elsewhere as “Struggle memoirs”
and which Dr Reuben Abati of The Guardian has once called “literature of resistance” –
books detailing our sordid experience under military dictatorships of the Babangida and
Abacha era, it offers a refreshing insight into the critical role played by the media in defiance
of dictatorship and in the promotion of democracy. A reading of these books – Ken Saro
Wiwa‟s A Month and a Day – A Prison Diary, Wole Soyinka‟s Open Sore of the Continent,
Chris Anyanwu‟s Days of Terror, Kunle Ajibade‟s Jailed for Life, the Wale Oshun‟s Trilogy
– Clapping with One Hand, Open Grave and Kiss of Death and my own Out of the Shadows:
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Dr Kayode Fayemi was ICNL’s pioneer Head of International Operations, Editor of the exile political
journal, Nigeria Now, Radio Kudirat’s Chief of Operations and later Director of the Centre for Democracy &
Development. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria and an
adjunct Professor of Security Studies at the African Centre for Strategic Studies, National Defense University,
USA.. He is now at the Elections Petition Tribunal battling to retrieve his stolen victory at the last
Governorship election in Ekiti State.
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2. Exile and the Struggle for Democracy and Freedom in Nigeria – to mention a few in a long
list of this literature of resistance – serve as a sober reminder of the evil of military rule and
how Nigerians in their various ways resisted even as others also capitulated. Taken together,
they also remind us of the risk of basking in the adulation of a democracy without democrats
and highlight although this country may be experiencing genuine transition, it is one that is
still suffused with a large dose of authoritarian instincts. Indeed, we are still caught in that
contradictory context so well depicted by the Italian Marxist scholar, Antonio Gramsci when
he argued that “the crisis of transition consists precisely of the fact that the old is dying and
the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear…”
The morbid symptoms are all about this polity and many continue to wonder if they will ever
disappear.
Yet, the birth of TheNews represented a rebirth of possibilities, of optimism that the morbid
symptoms will disappear from our country. At the time of their unexpected resignation from
African Concord Magazine for their journalistic daring, they were not oblivious for instance
of what happened to Dele Giwa, the irrepressible Editor-in-Chief of Newswatch Magazine,
but more concerned about what the military was doing to their country. As Bayo Onanuga,
the self-effacing leader of the troops put it prosaically in his resignation letter to Chief MKO
Abiola, “journalism is not meant for making the environment cosy for the leaders of nations;
it is meant to prod them to act in the interest of the larger society. It is meant to cause them
sleepless nights”(p.11). Even Chief Abiola who at the time thought Nigeria was not worth
dying for and urged upon Onanuga to apologise to General Babangida and his intelligence
goons and then move on with his life was to later realize the monumental risk of
compromising with evil, he was eventually matyred by them.
In seven captivating chapters, gripping in detail and racy in its narratives, Wale Adebanwi
chronicles The News‟ journey in and out of proscription, detention, persecution, triumph and
travails in the last fifteen years, and through them renders a vivid picture of how Nigeria
tethered at the edge, danced at the precipice and then fortuitously pulled back from the brink,
but not without a lot of blood on the street. The 204 page book with a prologue by Professor
Adebayo Williams, described as a five-star essayist by the author, which offers a fore-taste
of what to expect in the book in his graphic painting of a robust team of steely determination
ready to provide intellectual ammunition for the formulation, articulation and
implementation of ideas and mobilization of people against military dictatorship. The first
penetrating insight one gets into The News‟ worldview is appropriately captured in Chapter
One in the way the publication treated its first major cover on Justice Olugbani – a cover that
earned its editors their first trip to detention.
Although independent in its approach to news and analysis and even goes by the corporate
name – Independent Communications (Nigeria) Limited – the independence of The News is
no excuse for “opportunism and spineless neutrality in the major issues that affect the well
being of the Nigerian people”. Indeed, in the fifteen years of its existence, The News has
lived up to the billing of being „partisanly neutral on the side of the truth, justice and good
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3. governance.‟ The range of articles referred to by Wale Adebanwi depict intellectually
engaging and incredibly versatile minds in the magazine‟s eclectic coverage. Certain
common threads run through these articles – an uncommon courage, commitment to the core
values of building a good society founded on liberal democratic framework with full respect
for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Theirs has been more of a crusading journalism
in which the consistency of vision and the focus of progressive politics became very clear
early on.
For The News and its journalists - the newshound must be actively involved in the trenches
with the subaltern classes in the society, working with them to help make the state relevant to
the lives of all of its citizens. In short, the journalist must link journalism to political
activism. For its founders, it is not just „all the news that is fit to print‟ as the famous dictum
of the New York Times goes, but „all the news that is fit for the struggle‟. They certainly
took to heart Vladimir Lenin‟s counsel that „the press should not only be collective
propagandists and collective agitators but also collective organizers of the masses.‟ For this,
the journalists of The News and their sister publication, Tempo and AM News suffered
mightily. At a point, it was only the communist accountant amongst the founders, Idowu
Obasa left behind to keep the publication afloat from various guerilla locations, having lost
computers, printers and sundry items to the security agencies. His other colleagues were
either in jail, exile or given up on the dangerous life of uncertainty. By 1998, 14 out of the 26
journalists and media workers in prison were from The News group. The Magazine also had
the highest number of journalists underground or in exile. Indeed, if the maximum ruler had
not expired on top of his Indian paramours, ACP Zakari Biu had already put finishing
touches on the final solution for The News
There is of course always a price to pay for holding firm to principles in the battle to ensure
that ideas shape society. Wale Adebanwi is in my view at his best in his analysis of the
crusading journalist as a corporate manager in the chapter – Beyond the Headlines –
Consolidation and Growth; Disillusionment and Crisis. He argues, correctly I think, that
given the circumstances of its birth, there were exaggerated expectations from both its
investors and staff that The News group was going to be a contrasting model to the
suffocating antics of the Proprietor as just a Businessman. It obviously failed to fulfill the
dreams of some of the people who bought into the agenda. Leaving aside the disillusionment
of the journalists and some investors in the team, (and The News really should be proud of
the way it nurtured some of the best minds in today‟s media world – and I see many of them
here this evening), the central question to address is whether things could have been handled
in a different manner.
The broader question is whether the growing corporatisation of the media has a negative
effect on the process of democratization. In his acclaimed book, Agents of Power, J. Herbert
Altschull (1984) discusses the challenges and opportunities the press faces in a capitalist
economy and concludes that „the notion of the heroic press fighting the overwhelming power
of the mighty and the corrupt in the interest of the grateful citizen…is more mythic fairtytale
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4. than reality.‟ Even if the media has indeed succumbed to the wiles of a dominant corporate
influence, I refuse to accept that it operates in Nigeria as an instrument of undemocratic
power. The fact that it is not a shadowy enterprise is certainly a plus. Its‟ open, public
character certainly underscores its endearing quality for democracy.
Yet democratization is not just about consolidation but also about contestation, a struggle for
the continuing expansion of communicative spaces within which people can gain the social
and political confidence needed to act more authoritatively in the political arena. This can
often only come about when the media is ready to play a watchdog, adversarial and an
agenda-setting role, rather than a lap-dog role for the establishment; localizing universal
principles of freedom of expression and re-ordering power relations. The News has certainly
played a frontline role in the struggle to open communicative spaces that may serve as
enclaves from which further efforts to promote democracy may grow. The role of the
independent media in the fostering of a discursive public realm, in which issues of national
and local concerns are ventilated remains of critical importance and publications like The
News cannot afford to rest on their oars lest they fall victim of the Chomskian notion of
manufacturing consent and inducing conformity on behalf of power.
Of course, given Adebanwi‟s magisterial testimony in the book and our own lived
experience of what The News group has contributed to the opening of democratic space in
Nigeria, it is probably enough to ask all those who have been part of this enterprise to take a
bow. Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, the question that the book leaves hanging in the
mouth of any reader is: What next? Where does The News go from here? The Editor-in-
Chief, Mr Onanuga has provided some answers in the current edition of the magazine when
he talks about e-publishing and diversifying into non-media business, citing the example of
The Washington Post making more money from its non-media ventures than from its
newspaper sales.
As for me, the possibilities are legion, but the most important challenge is ensuring that the
magazine continues to define the present and shaping the future of our democracy.
Congratulations, the best is yet to come.
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