The President Meets the Press
“A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.”
On the afternoon of the frank give-and-take between President Shehu Shagari and the nation’s news executives, the point was made that the press in the republic must be consulted and respected if the democratic ideals espoused in Nigeria were to survive. It was on a Wednesday when President Shehu Shagari decided to break bread with news executives at the palatial State House on Marina. As the president addressed the journalists at the end of the buffet lunch of pounded yam, goat meat and other well-prepared Nigerian dishes, it became quite clear that the whole point of press freedom which was on the minds of the editors in that room was weighing down on the spare figure of the president. In his soft voice, he seemed to be invoking the eternal truth of what the press should be like in a free society, a solemn truth spoken in 1971 by a United States judge named Murray Gurfein: “A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press, must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.”
Judge Gurfein was not addressing the gathering of journalists when he spoke those words. He was delivering a judgment in a case brought by the New York Times against the United States Government in a matter which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. The Times had sued to preserve the atmosphere in the US for free expression and the right of the people to know. The paper was fighting for its very existence as much as it was fighting for the American press. Much of the American law ie pure philosophy, therefore, it was little surprising that Judge Gurfein would allow himself a flight of some philosophy in finding on the side of the New York Times.
President Shagari might have read or might not have read Judge Gurfein’s words, but that the president shared the essence of the man’s statement was not in doubt that afternoon as the journalists listened solemnly to him. To date, Judge Gurfein’s powerful statement on the ideal position for the press remains the most eloquent enunciation of the eternal truth. In invoking that truth, President Shagari seemed to be saying in his own words that he was, in a proverbial sense, bowed by that realization. The moment came after he president had spent some 30 minutes joking with few editors. The President and Vice-President Alex Ekwume were seated in a divan set to the side of the cavernous ground floor living-room of the State House. Sensing the oddity of being seated away from its guests,even as an editor was just observing that oddity, President Shagari called out his Chief Press Secretary Chales Igoh and asked why were his guests seated away from him. The President then directed that the editors of the Concord papers, the Sketch group, the Punch papers, the Tribune and Chris Okolie, the Guild of Editors president, should join him and the vice-president in the divan.
Relaxed and in a jovial mood, the president then engaged Sola Oyegbami, the editor of the Sketch, in a conversation. Sola Oyegbami then seized on the occasion to complain to the president that his newspaper had not been receiving invitations to presidential functions and to presidential trips overseas. President Shagari then asked Mr. Igoh for explanation. But what was most striking in the conversation which took place in the divan was the president’s apparent disappointment that Tola Adeniyi of the Nigerian Tribune, whom he described as his “friend,” was not present at the State House that afternoon. President Shagari said he had reserved the space nearest to him for Mr. Adeniyi and the Tribune editor. He asked Mr. Igoh for possible explanation for Mr. Adeniyi’s absence. The press secretary then explained that the Tribune had not been honouring invitations sent to it and that was why the State House stopped inviting the newspaper. The president, joined by Vice-President Ekwume, then directed Mr. Igoh to ensure that the Tribune was invited to all future activities of the president. Very interesting. Before going up to address the editors, President Shagari adjudicated the much publicized disagreement between the working press and his secretary. Joking that he was tired of serving Mr.Igoh’s “counsel,” President Shagari asked his press secretary to defend himself as Mr. Oyegbami and Tayo Kehinde, editor of the Punch, made more complains against the State House press office. President Shagari blamed Mr. Igoh where he thought the press secretary was wrong and accepted some blames for himself, for example, in the perennial delays in getting the president’s speeches. President said that his speeches were often late because he was in the habit of ordering the speeches rewritten several times. He said his speech writers were not what he would call good, that they didn’t understand they should fit their writing to a speaking pattern, and so on.
One of the editors in the divan joked that the president might be a little difficult in the speech writing area because of his obvious bent for rhythm and reason. That got the president, the vice-president and the editors launching. “But I don’t insist that they should write my speeches in poetry,” the president allowed. He even said that he was looking for a good writer. After which the president went up to the lectern at the head of the long dining area in the living room and delivered his homily to the press: Judge me not had, he seemed to be saying, for I dan’t think of you as inconsequential. This job has turned out to be harder than I thought, and my dera friends, it weighs me down. I can’t see all the people I want to see. Ministers want to see me, and I must see them. National Assemblymen want to see me, and I must see them. Diplomats send down requests for meeting, my dear friends of the press, protocol demands that I must see them. People come from up country who will be angry if I don’t see them, so I see them. Delegations come from out of the country with compelling messages from their government, so I am obliged to receive them. Nigeria is a country hard to govern and when the dusk comes, after spending the day from morn, I pray for a twenty-five hour day. This is why I have not been able to spend as much time with you, gentlemen of the press as I thought I would be able to when the responsibility of running this country fell on me last year. But, my dear friends, judge me not too hard for I shall look for time to see you more often in the coming year.
That was more or less what the president said, and when he finished, the journalists gave him a standing ovation. He said, as well, that the press had a constitutional responsibility to pry into the corners of his administration and keep the people of Nigeria informed of what he was doing as the president. He gave the press a pass mark. Two elements of the afternoon impressed the journalists. The president’s humility and apparent regard for a free press, and his ready admission that governing Ngeria was no mean business. By the same token, we journalists, too, are bound by our duty of digging out information and bringing it to the people. For as Walter Lippmann, the late American journalist, said: “If the country is to be governed with the consent of the governed, then the governed must arrive at opinions about what their governors want them to consent to.” Lippmann added that the role of the press in such a situation was to “make it our business to find out what is going on under the surface and beyond the horizon.”
“This is our job,” he said. It is no mean calling.”
©Sunday Concord, November 16, 1980
(Pp.91-94)
