Sometime in February, at an interactive session– in Ikogosi Warm Springs Resort– with Kayode Fayemi, governor of Ekiti State, one of the participants– as many raised-hands jostled—was picked by the moderator to ask the governor his question. Nicholas Ibekwe, he would announce as his name. With an aura of confidence, he added, “I work with Premium Times.” His voice carried so much energy and his question[s] was punchy. Nicholas appeared as the pugnacious type. You would notice this immediately he began to talk, gesturing more frankly. Where I sat, a close distance to his seat, I nodded in admiration. This guy should replace one of those journalists who babysit Goodluck Jonathan during the presidential media chats. It is not certain if Goodluck will survive Nicholas.
There was something I was going to ask Nicholas after the session.
A
month earlier, Nicholas’ Premium Times published an investigative
report, Inside Nigeria’s Ruthless Human Trafficking Mafia. It was a
report that overwhelmed one with sadness. A few days later, however,
critical observers began to expose the faults in the story everybody had
bought. The most vocal of these observers was the literary critic,
Ikhide Ikheloa. “This story is a faabu,” Ikhide, on his Twitter and
Facebook timelines, screamed morning, day, and night. He would
eventually produce an article, Tobore Ovuorie’s story: Fact or fiction?
The critical pieces of evidence Ikheloa provided in that piece to
suggest the story a fiction, are too weighty to be discarded. He ended
with the line; ‘There are many reasons to confront this story, its
veracity being the least, but still a crucial reason to deal with it.
The credibility of a nation is pretty much gone, but once our
journalists lose their credibility, it is all over.’
Day
in, day out, Ikheloa would not relent. In every of his Facebook post,
he pulled out the Managing Editors of Premium Times– Dapo Olorunyomi and
Musikilu Mojeed– by the nape of their neck, to apologize to Nigerians
for publishing what he called a fake story.
Later
that evening in Ikogosi, as participants trooped to the poolside, where
we go to lounge, I hastened my movement to meet Ibekwe who was ahead.
“Someone
is discrediting an investigative report by Tobore Ovuore, one of your
reporters at Premium Times,” I opened the conversation with Nicholas
after we had exchanged handshakes. “He calls your bosses out every day
in his Facebook mentions to whip them. I don’t like the way Ikhide is
going about; rubbishing your newspaper which had become a household
name, being a reliable news source.”
I
needed a point from Nicholas (the man I had seen as a no-nonsense
journalist from Premium Times), which I intended to use in a Facebook
post to rebut Ikheloa’s criticism.
Nicholas
looked at me, almost dismissively. He, however, managed to tell me that
he knew nothing about all that. We couldn’t talk further as I left his
side. That was the first and only time I had seen Nicholas Ibekwe.
If
you do not know Nicholas Ibekwe, he is currently the most talked about
Premium Times journalist who ‘exposed’ the bribery deal between popular
Nigerian pastor, T.B Joshua and the journalists who went to his
Synagogue Church of All Nation, where a collapsed building killed many. I
have followed Nicholas’ tweets as they were consistently retweeted into
my Twitter timeline. He is angry about many things; that Lagos Governor
Fashola met with Joshua behind closed doors, and after the meeting,
dodged reporters, and perhaps his most prioritized anger; how Joshua
offered N50,000 bribe to each journalist at the press conference of
September 14. He soon released a recording of the bribery deal he had
alleged. And then, on the 23rd of September [yesterday], he eventually
came out with his story: “Why I exposed T.B. Joshua for bribing
journalists.”
So,
why did Nicholas publish the audio? “…when I woke up last Saturday
morning and saw the picture of President Goodluck Jonathan shaking hands
with a grinning TB Joshua with headlines like ‘Jonathan consoles TB
Joshua,’ I said damn it! I couldn’t stomach this blatant impunity.”
“Journalists
shouldn’t be seen or heard telling the prime suspect they would write
‘just like you said’ after he offered to buy their consciences with N50,
000,” he also said.
I
hadn’t listened to the audio. But in Nicholas’ story published in
Premium Times, the audio was reproduced. I reached for my earpiece and
gave that audio a rapt attention. Four minutes or there about. Perhaps I
didn’t get the real thing, I played it again. And then, again. Time
wouldn’t allow me, I would have transcribed here. Only first-class
thinkers would agree with me. That audio I listened to has nothing to do
with a bribery deal. Wait, you can call for my head later. Go back to
that audio and listen again! In the audio, we hear Joshua announcing
some 750k; to be shared, 50k each to journalists, to fuel their car.
Some ask questions about the issue at hand, and Joshua– in a tone that
depicts sobriety– answers them. And, as they round off, Joshua asks,
‘So, what are you going to write?’ and they all laugh at what seem a
sarcastic remark from Joshua. I laughed, too.
In
his story, however, Nicholas argued, “He clearly meant for the money to
influence the reporting of the event, ‘So what are you going to
write?’” he had asked. That makes it a bribe. Simple.’
Your
head is in the air. Such is the problem when you are highly
opinionated. By what logical conclusion do we pronounce that bribery?
Let
me quickly state that it is wrong for Governor Fashola and President
Jonathan to be seen patting Joshua’s shoulder over the collapsed
building that was largely his fault. And of course, this is not an
attempt to write in defence of Joshua. If you care to know, I may soon
renounce my membership of the Pentecostal movement, following many
atrocities within this Movement that do not stand well with me.
We
are only stupid to assume 750k is money enough a bribe from T.B Joshua
to hush journalists. The story was already in the mainstream media. I
have watched NEMA PRO on Channels TV lamenting the difficulties they
were having with T.B Joshua’s church authority. All had become clearer
that there was illegal addition of storeys to the building which
eventually resulted in the collapse. And even Joshua himself knows that
the ‘hovering craft’ tale is not buyable. So, why exactly would he bribe
journalists with 750k?
What
is my point? That 50k is appropriately called honorarium. If after the
announcement of that 50k for journalists to fuel their car and that
Nicholas had rejected, he was then called back to further negotiate an
increase, then it becomes a bribe! They are desperate about hiding
something! Oxford dictionary helps us with the definition of an
honorarium: ‘A payment given for professional services that are rendered
nominally without charge.’ T.B. Joshua is no fool to think 750k is okay
to bribe journalists so the story is not exposed. That is simply
honorarium, and it follows the tradition of the church.
On
the other hand, Oxford dictionary says this about bribe: ‘A sum of
money or other inducement offered or given to bribe someone.’ Is
Nicholas insinuating that 50k to fuel his car poses a bribery threat? Is
it that Nicholas couldn’t have accepted that 50k and still go ahead to
publish his investigative findings? When such honorariums are doled out,
no journalist is held by any obligatory terms to accept. Depending on
the circumstances surrounding the story, I, as a [freelance] journalist
may accept or reject such honorarium. It would take the next lifetime to
have me bribed so I won’t expose a story. If you decide to force the
‘honorarium’ on me, I will take it. I have a network of friends whose
stomachs are an empty tank of beer. They will beer with that money and
that story you are desperate in hiding from the public would have a
smooth ride to the press.
Many
people are aware of my affiliation with the APC, and admiration for
Kayode Fayemi. The report I did for The Scoop after the Ekiti
governorship election did not, in a single sentence, favour APC and the
party’s flag-bearer, Fayemi. My editor was worried. He wanted a balanced
feel in the report. “Do you mean you couldn’t find anybody who spoke
well of the APC candidate?” he asked me before pushing the report for
publishing. I knew I could not write it with the bias I have for the
APC.
In
the May 1994 edition of the American Journalism Review, Alicia C.
Shepard writes; ‘Critics say that taking money from groups falling under
a reporter’s purview raises all sorts of potential conflicts of
interest or, at least, the appearance of one. The money also raises
questions about a reporter’s objectivity.’ So, like Nicholas, if I were
at the meeting with T.B Joshua, I would have rejected the honorarium
offer. But, I will not refer to it as bribe.
The globally recognized Associated Press, AP, recognises this honorarium thing. On its website,
under the heading, AP News Values & Principles, we read this:
‘Associated Press offices and staffers are often sent or offered gifts
of other items—some of them substantial, some of them modest, some of
them perishable—by sources, public relations agencies, corporations and
others.’
‘Sometimes
these are designed to encourage or influence AP news coverage or
business, sometimes they are just ‘perks’ for journalists covering a
particular event. Whatever the intent, we cannot accept such items; an
exception is made for trinkets like caps or mugs that have nominal
value, approximately $25 or less. Otherwise, gifts should be politely
refused and returned, or if that is impracticable, they should be given
to charity.’
End
of discussion? I know some would say this is an attempt to
euphemistically rebrand bribe as honorarium. If you are of this thought,
I borrow the words of Nicholas and I throw them at you, ‘I can’t help
you if you can’t decipher that. I am a reporter not a brain surgeon.’
Well,
bribery is a criminal offense. And if Nicholas insists this is a bribe
deal, he shouldn’t hesitate in writing the lawyer, Femi Falana, on the
need to take this case up.
It is no news, that journalists in Nigeria are underpaid. Nicholas, in his story, admits this. According to www.payscale.com,
a [USA] journalist earns an average salary of $36,834 per year.
According to me, a Nigerian journalist’s pay in a year is around $6,000.
It is not totally a bad pay. What is bad is the delay and
irregularities in the payment. While I was covering Osun election, I
interviewed an academic, Babatunde Bakare, at the Bowen University. I
didn’t know him from anywhere. After the interview, he asked me how I
was surviving as a journalist. I told him I have other things that I do
that pay my bills. Even though I wasn’t seriously investigating any
story, I was just seeking the opinion of an academic on the election,
Babatunde felt obliged to give me something to support my transport and
logistics. He would later tell me that until his recent appointment as
an academic, he was a senior producer/scriptwriter for one of Africa’s
largest TVs, AIT. And he wasn’t paid salary in the last ten months he
had worked with AIT.
I
also stopped taking Sam Nda-Isaiah’s presidential ambition seriously
the day I heard he owed his reporters at Leadership Newspaper, four
month salary. It took a Twitter/Facebook protest to get Sam to bow to
his employees’ demands. These delays, irregularities, underpayment, are
not justifiable reasons to accept bribe. No, they are not. These
reasons, however, justify the collection of an honorarium, such type
that does not mean you should report a black story as white.
Nicholas,
then, advises journalists to ‘explore other related and legitimate
means of making money like researching, writing, and editing reports for
NGO…’ This is the silliest of all advices. Journalism is a professional
job. The burden of researching, investigating a story, is already time
consuming. News are time bound, and Nicholas risks his job with Premium
Times if he fails to beat deadlines for the kind of ‘pending stories’ he
mentions in his piece. I make money as a private academic researcher.
The months I have more than two research jobs, I suspend my journalistic
activities. And the day I become a full time journalist, I should
resign as a researcher. Journalistic work is enough work to get enough
pay if things were right.
As
I conclude, I should raise an issue. After the three day media/blogger
interactive forum in Ekiti in February, participants were each offered
50k honorarium by the organizers. My name is Femi Owolabi. I received
the N50,000 (of course it never influenced my subsequent criticisms.
Many who also accepted the money had asked Governor Kayode Fayemi
harsher questions during the forum and even wrote critically about his
policies after we had left). However, Stanley Azuakola, the editor of
The Scoop and Chinedu Ekeke, the editor of Ekekeee in their separate
critical reports, revealed that they politely rejected the N50,000. Out
of about thirty participants, Nicholas Ibekwe inclusive, I am yet to
read of any other apart from Stanley, Chinedu and Stanley Achonu (the
Operations Lead of BudgIT), who didn’t take that N50,000 honorarium. It
is, therefore, logical to believe that Nicholas Ibekwe, who now accuses
his fellow journalists of bribery when it was honorarium, received such
in February in Ekiti.
If he didn’t receive that money, here is my apology in advance. 
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