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A Note on Press Coverage of the Ogoni Crisis
by WALE ADEBAMIWI ¹

The Nigerian press has been an institutional instrument for the protection of marginal and marginalized groups in the battles against dominant groups and interests. From its advent in 1859, the Nigerian press has provided a means of articulation, projection of interests, and civil intervention in a colonial society and state and, subsequently, a voice for the unempowered and the disadvantaged.

Consistently, the dominant section of the Nigerian press has defended marginal interests, in the total organization of the Nigerian state. Conversely, the marginal section of the press (owned or sustained by the state and/or dominant ethnic groups) has supported and defended dominant interest.

It is against this general backdrop that one can understand the pattern of coverage of ethnic conflict/diversity.

In the specific case of the Ogoni Crisis, it is important to note three points. First, the two sides, Ogoni versus dominant groups/Nigerian state, were in open conflict over the meaning and interpretation of the issues at stake. Consequently, two opposing interpretive frameworks were employed in the press.

Second, the sources on both sides of the conflict identified the press as an important agent in winning public support of their standpoints. Third, the key issues in media coverage are domination, exploitation, federalism, justice, fairness, and political, social, and economic neglect.

Unarguably, the coverage of this crisis by both the dominant section of the press (also called the 'Lagos-Ibadan' axis, the advocacy press of the 'Ngbati Press) and the marginal section of the press (also called the government-owned press or Arewa/Northern press) show the clear linkage between this crisis and the National Question.

At the initial state of the Ogoni agitation, media coverage by the Lagos-Ibadan media axis focused on neglect. As Newswatch captured it, the voice of the Ogoni "represent, the collective voices of the oil-producing areas of the country crying against the neglect and poverty they have experienced in the midst of plenty."

The government-owned establishment press, including the New Nigerian and Hotline, ignored the Ogoni agitation at this initial stage. The key theme of neglect in the Lagos-Ibadan press captured the sub-theme of exploitation/ appropriation/devastation/despoilation in ways that set binary relations between the Ogoni and the Nigerian state/dominant ethnic groups, particularly the Hausa-Fulani (for example see Sunday Tribune, Nov 19,1995.) This exploitation/appropriation sub-theme linked the Nigerian State (dominated by the Hausa-Fulani) with international finance capital (represented by Shell), capturing their alliance as one that has "wrecked for eternity" the livelihood and well being of the Ogoni. Strong images of devastation and evocative metaphors are used to construct the binary image of the deprived and the criminally indifferent.

Ken Saro-Wiwa, the arrowhead of the Ogoni struggle, attracted a large measure of support to the cause, given his own relationship with the Lagos-Ibadan press as a newspaper columnist, author, TV series producer, and later president of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA). Saro-Wiwa confesses as much in his book A Month and A Day (pp.139-140).

Saro-Wiwa, minority activists and other human rights activists constituted the major sources for the news stories and analysis. On a few occasions, voices representing the Hausa-Fulani and the Nigerian State were brought in with a view to discursively raise the stake, betraying the insensitivity and disdain of the dominant groups. Tanko Yakassai often reminded the Ogoni "(who) are not many" of what the Hausa-Fulani did to the 'Biafrans.' The coverage by the Lagos-Ibadan press concentrated on Ogoni terms, conditions, demands and grievances while the constraints and positions of dominant groups (government, Hausa-Fulani ethnic category, and the oil companies) were hardly covered. In a recent study of three magazines and one newspaper that were analyzed over a one-year period, there were less than five instances where the views of the dominant groups were given as much space as that given to the Ogoni.

The trial and the subsequent execution of Ogoni activists brought out strong reactions from the press. The trial was deconstructed in the Lagos-Ibadan press as a "show trial" with "tunes of morbidly familiar performance" linkable to the trial of General Zamani Lekwot and other Zango-Kataf leaders.

While Justice Auta (Lagos-Ibadan press) was an "Abacha hireling" who displayed startling peculiarities, the Tribunal was for the "reputable" Northern press. While the News described Saro-Wiwa as a "progressively minded (man)...whose heroic struggles for the restoration of Ogoni rights raised the struggle... to the epicenter of national discourse," the New Nigerian saw him as the "instigator and promoter of militant strategy and violent options."

For TELL, the " judicial murder" of Saro-Wiwa and his constituents made the world see the General Sani Abacha junta "much in the light of a yahoo... a regime with sensibilities as pristinely unrefined as those of ruling brutes of the Stone Age." For the New Nigerian, "one lesson (of the Ogoni crisis) is the morbid and stinking hypocrisy of the Western nations." "The world," TELL insisted, "is not over-reacting (because the hanging) rides brutally against settled convictions." However, the New Nigerian disagreed, stating categorically that the suspension of Nigeria from the Commonwealth "was a convenient excuse for the unfolding of a premeditated agenda against Nigeria ... (a decision which) was premeditated, retrogressive, and high-handed."

As a whole, it is evident that the newspapers and magazines took positions that were consistent with their standpoints on the larger issues of the national question. For the Ngbati press, the Ogoni crisis was yet another manifestation of the 'lopsidedness' of the Nigerian Federation, inequitable resource allocation, hegemony and domination by the Hausa-Fulani, in particular, and the need for self-determination from the constituent parts of the Nigerian Union. For the Arewa press, it was purely a matter of law and order, of subversive agencies and groups that had ulterior motives, of the sovereignty of Nigeria and her rights to non-interference by other countries.

As noted elsewhere, the press coverage was framed in a largely exclusionary manner, which fell into the usual cleavages produced by the history and politics of dominant-marginal relations in Nigeria. Therefore, the coverage was highly consequential because they were linked with and over-determined by history and politics.

1. Wale Adebamiwi teachers political science at the University of Ibadan. He is also on the editorial board of The Tribune.