Another Side of DN 4
“If the society becomes a little bit more open, if DN4 is put to the rubbish heap of history where it belongs, the press, only the press, would have the power to put ugly rumours to death.”
Poor Ayuba. There he was early in the morning of a Wednesday on the front page of The Guardian placed atop a headline which said: “Ayuba Denies Involvement in Alleged Coup Attempt.” If you were a fellow who receives his papers early in the day even before you get you coffee, you might just think that the headlines on that story was a hoax. “Dead men,” as everyone knows, “don’t talk.” But then you rubbed your eyes of the residue of sleep to ensure that you were not having a nightmare. It wasn’t a dream, not to talk of it being a nightmare. The day was Wednesday, and The Guardian indeed had it on its front page, Ayuba’s announcement of his being alive. You then looked at the man’s picture and realized that his face did not betray the anguish that he must have felt at being fingered for the dead. Ayuba is a soldier. Soldier are not supposed to be afraid, not even of death. But that can’t be true. Everybody is afraid of death. The only time a man can abuse death is after a dear one has been had by death or when a man has no choice but to die, and it is then that he says to hell to death, left with the only choice of picking his form of death.
Adolf Hitler, who all by himself caused the death of some 50 million people because he started the Second World War, feared death when the end became inevitable. Hitler couldn’t possibly have been the sort of man believed in the humanist literature of Shakespeare who said that only cowards die many times before their death. Hitler bit a pill of cyanide and he was in such a hurry to avoid the other sort of death that could have come to him that he couldn’t endure waiting through the short moment needed for the cyanide to knock him off painlessly. He blew out his brain. Ayuba, who is a lieutenant-colonel and the Commander of the Signals Corps of the Nigerian Army, said he was amused initially by the story of his execution when friends called him to ask whether he was alive. Later he realized that the matter wasn’t all that funny, lest it became the truth. Col. Ayuba didn’t look like a fellow who would like to be shot to death, and that can be understood. Now you know that he is alive, didn’t take part in any abortive coup, that indeed no coup attempt took place, and that none had taken place since the beginning of the present administration. That is another question. But you, too, heard of the story, now rumour, that Ayuba was executed because, as he had to deny, he was rumoured to have been involved in a coup.
Many people heard the rumour. It is now academic to ask how the rumour started, and why Ayuba became the fall-guy of such a malicious story. But nobody doubted it, evidence of which was the fact that his friends called him to ask his good health. When I first heard the rumour, more than a week before Ayuba’s announcement of continue living, I asked how it happened. Of course, the answers to such questions usually don’t provide whys and who’s. You get whats. The was correct in saying that the story seemed to get its greatest support from the circumstantial evidence of the non-appearance of his wife on the NTA Network News where she issues forth every other day as a co-anchor. They story line was that the nation couldn’t possibly put on the air the wife of an executed coup planner. And now this. Ayuba, who ordinarily would not have agreed to discuss the health of his wife on the pages of newspapers – such questions are considered private in Nigeria, even if the couple involved draw their livehood from your taxes – found himself explaining that it was not true that his wife was ill because she was heart-broken after Ayuba took another woman.
I like Ayuba’s answer. “Do I look like the type of man who can give people hypertension?” No, I don’t think so. I really like the fellow and I am happy that he is still here with us. The most interesting part of his interview was his admonition to Nigerians to desist from rumour-mongering. I like it best because he would be the first person not to blame the whipping lad, the press, for such a thing. But Ayuba should be angry with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) where they surely heard of the rumour of his violent passage for not putting the rumour to rest on the network news. But you can’t really blame the network, not with Decree No. 4 hovering over everybody’s head. The most intriguing aspect of this story is, how did The Guardian come about writing of rumour that nobody was supposed to talk about in the media. If young Jullyyette Ukabiala of The Guardian had gone to Ayuba to say: “I hear you are dead because you were involved in a coup,” she could be in trouble. My scenario now: Ayuba had begun to worry greatly about the strength of the rumour that he had no choice other than to ask The Guardian to come help out. Funny, he didn’t got to the NTA or the Daily Times or any of the other government papers. When these things happen, you need credibility and so you go to the most credible source: independent press. But this is the section of the press most under the assault of Decree 4 which I blame for the possibility of that sort as Ayuba being executed making the rounds of dinner tables in Nigeria.
That is the other side of DN 4, the evil side. Ayuba is definitely an important Nigerian about whom such a story, when heard by anyone in the press, should be verified and published. But people are so afraid of the clamp of the power of silence in the nation that no one wanted to accept the risk of that simple social responsibility demanded of the press. It amounts to nothing less than a suicide for a man to pick up his phone to ask a senior military official if it is true that he is involved in a military coup attempt as a result of which it is understood that he has beed shot. You may be arrested under DN4 and he asked to name your source. If you keep quite, you will be guilty of aiding and abetting rumour-mongering. You can go to jail for two years. Ayuba said that no coup attempt has taken place in the life of this administration. I am also happy to hear that. Before his statement, the rumour going round was that junior officers attempted a coup sometimes ago. Now, that’s bad. But if the society becomes a little bit more open, if DN 4 is put to the rubbish heap of history where it belongs, the press, only the press, has the power to put these ugly rumour to death. Too many of them are flying around. This is unhealthy
©Newswatch, May 20, 1985
(Pp.264-266)
