In the wake of the story it carried on the Samoa Agreement on July 4. 2024, the Daily Trust ran into a storm of comments in the Nigerian commentariat.
I would segment the comments into two and situate them in time.
The first segment of comments was overwhelmingly from those that felt outraged by a story in which the federal government was reported to have consented to some of the clauses of the agreement which purportedly called for the recognition of LGBTQ issues in the country contrary to extant laws which expressly prohibit such. The comments, which were vehemently condemnatory, created a sense of panic especially as the subject became a matter of sermons during the Friday prayers in many mosques around the country.
Alarmed by the potential damage to its image and standing that the contents of the story could cause, the government hastily unleashed a slew of influencers on social media and other media platforms to take on the newspaper. The rear-guard action also saw the minister of Information and National Orientation addressing another unprecedented and hastily organised press conference in which the Daily Trust newspaper was the main subject of unjustified excoriation.
Nigerians who watched the minister’s address on TV and read the contents, saw a minister clutching at straws and an administration which he serves as behaving like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an approaching vehicle.
In a direct reference to the Daily Trust, the minister stated, “We are alarmed by the level of reckless reporting and statements by some media organisations and individuals that border on national security and stability….The insidious and inciting publications by the Daily Trust these past months have come across as nothing but a deliberate effort to brush the government with a tar.”
While these statements can be taken in general context, the unkindest cut of all was the minister’s reference that the Daily Trust was championing a jaundiced narrative twisted with “regional sentiment to cause disaffection’’ in the country.
Were the minister not in panic stations as he addressed that press conference, he would have taken his time to do a nuanced introspection on the Daily Trust’s trajectory as a newspaper which would have enabled him to avoid the sort of unjustified references he made.
The fact is the Daily Trust had a set store of constant coverage and consistent content and reporting on issues in this country through the years that its readers are least surprised at its current run-in with the Tinubu administration.
In its early years which coincided with the return to civil rule in 1999 and the advent of the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration, the Daily Trust set out off the block to help defend the new democratic ethos in the country, along with other media platforms. As a result of its robust performance in this regard, it was labelled a newspaper given to defending regional interests. Inevitably the paper ran into trouble with the Obasanjo administration which resulted in a civil suit between President Obasanjo’s son, Gbenga, and Media Trust, the owners of the newspaper, over a column by the late Sam Nda-Isaiah titled ‘Mr President Sir, Your time is up’.
Many thought with the coming of the Yar’Adua administration, the allegations against Daily Trust as a sectional paper will be vindicated as the government was headed by a northerner who incidentally hailed from the same Katsina State as some of the paper’s board members. But even with the added fact that many of Daily Trust’s staff left to join the Yar’Adua government, the paper remained even more unrelenting in its chosen path of holding the government to account for its actions and policies. Several incidents during the Yar’Adua administration testified to this.
Again, during the Goodluck Jonathan years, the Daily Trust kept up its role as a public watchdog. Indeed, it was during this time that the administration was so irked that it resorted to seizing copies of the paper at different locations across the country.
Then came the President Muhammadu Buhari administration during which, even ironically as another Katsina man, the Daily Trust newspaper endured its most torrid time yet with any government in the country. It was during the Buhari administration that the paper was twice invaded by armed soldiers and forced to close down for some time.
Going through this history of chequered relations through the years with successive administrations, the Daily Trust cannot by any stretch of imagination be labelled as sectional, biased and a platform for disunity and disaffection as the minister sought to portray the paper in his address.
Indeed, in the instant case of the Samoa Agreement and the LGBTQ issue, the Daily Trust proved its professionalism by promptly owning up to its mistakes in a statement it issued. Again, the paper also allowed and carried critical opinions of its handling of the Samoa Agreement issue written by one of its former editors.
Does this look like a paper given to deliberately causing disunity in the country?
The fact is while the Daily Trust’s attitude contrasts with that of the government in owning up to its responsibility as far as its actions and policies are concerned. The information minister in his address sought to ‘’tar’’ the paper with the brush on the issues it listed. But has the minister owned up to the well-known fact that the administration he serves had not seen it fit to consult with stakeholders on the actions it had taken before it became public knowledge? Was that the case with the removal of subsidy, devaluation of the naira, the decision to restore democracy in Niger, the purported citing of foreign military bases in Nigeria and the instant case of the Samoa Agreement? Even the National Assembly which has constitutional responsibility over such matters had not been informed let alone been given the opportunity to legislate on some of these matters.
I think the minister of Information who himself is a professional in the business should ask himself why in an administration surfeit with a collection of media practitioners, they have not been able to do much to prevent what has now become the frequent public relations cop-out that is now the signature of the government in this area.
I think going forward, this is what the minister should look to amend rather than make scapegoats of newspapers and media platforms like Daily Trust that are striving to carry out the obligation they owe the Nigerian public professionally and responsibly.
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