Editorial

 

THE CHALLENGE OF EXECTIVES’ IMPUNITY AND INTOLERANCE, TO PRESS FREEDOM

 By Emmanuel Ajiboye

 GEO 300L

One of the commonsense understanding about a university is that it is the preparatory site for high level professionalism, waiting outside school. Hence it has not been an eyesore when law students in the university try to behave as though they were lawyers defending clients, students that would become tech pros trying out their hands in one or more mini tech projects, and future journalists learning the etiquettes of covering a story of public interest, interviewing witnesses and styling their contents to meet target audience. All these extra-classroom skills make for the quality of university education, and ensuring the outputs of its environment are distinguished from the rough-knuckles found in the StreetSide.

In this wise, democracy is the towering culture of the university environment, the guardian of all acts and attitudes and the lenses for knowing and judging defiant acts, the better to have them uprooted and their victims corrected. 

Student-politicians here and there have demonstrated a big challenge as regards the expected ethos of relationships in a democratic environment. wherever the eyes of observation turn, one student leader after the other is found arrogating unwarranted powers unto himself, sinning against the doctrine of separation of powers or concluding after all that there is an existing impunity somewhere covering up for all their misacts or omissions. In honesty, our arrogant and power-drunk students’ leaders may have been confused. They look through the media into the Nigeria of our day existing outside campus and would not find any ingredient of democracy coexisting with her leadership style. They see wanton barbarism, the consistent abuse of power passing unchallenged, while Nigerians as a people have at no time made a sounding protest against executive impunity sewn within the national flesh. All these make it sound irritant for campus politicians when the manner of exercise of their powers is being questioned. “where is democracy in Nigeria” they instinctively ask; “and how dare you demand from me, Mr. J, virtues which are not even available in the national center? How dare you question the way I man my office or the processes which I seek to tool in arriving at my official ends?”

Because campus journalists are the group of professionals, trained and by extension licensed to demand democratic responsibility from campus politicians, because journalism as a profession on campus can only survive when democratic tenets like freedom to inform and the right to seek and be supplied with necessary public information are well established, the frequent clashes between burgeoning campus dictators and journalists who own their gut are expected and natural enough. The dictatorial instincts inform their victims to decide on behalf of the other, to evaluate and judge ex-parte and to excuse subtly or explicitly all forms of debate and other public interferences from issues which matter to the public. But the brooding campus dictators we find around us do badly to forget where they are. That they are in the university where ideas, virtues, policies and conduct are produced and exported outward and not the otherwise. Street-leadership with its wanton use of excess force and lack of democratic gestures is best exemplified in the leadeship of the NURTW, as it should be fiercely rejected from the insides of a university. Debate, respect for and tolerance of different opinions may not make sense to the Bodija market women association, but in the administration of students’ public affairs in the University of Ibadan, it should be the central law. In all these the sinner who we should wish for the mercies of providence is often the aggressive and arrogant President of a students’ association who has little balls to regard dissent views and seeks to shield himself by any means from public watchfulness through the Press.

It is to protect this free exercise of Press independence that the Union of Campus Journalists exist, and the one in the University of Ibadan has been in perpetual existence for 34years at least. Thus, the Press on campus does not only report events and announce new public regulations, or just investigate anomalies in order to publish them. In all they do, the press tries the executives’ obedience to the doctrine of democracy. They equally demand from students’ leaders, accountability to their constituents in the discharge of their sworn duties, and in this pursuit press freedom, away from executives stalking is as core as the Petroleum Motor Spirit is to the engine of the automobile.

 Democracy dies in darkness and the evils of dictatorship grow when institutions designed to ensure democratic compliances are either dousing off, outrightly asleep or have lost their marks. To protect their professional deeds, the relationship between pressmen and the executives of their territorial students’ associations cannot be expected to be so intimate and cozy towards mutual personal benefits. Wherever this is observed, the blade of respect for press activities blunts out and its naturally shining emblem deteriorates by default. The role of pressmen assumes a high level of self-dedication, self-education and sufficient intellectual superiority. Wherever these are absent executive stalking and disrespect marches upwards and soon becomes a norm. It is a moral duty to stand a holy war against this menace.