Was it unethical for the media in Nigeria to have published results of the last election which did not emanate from the Federal Electoral Commission (FEDECO)? Was Nigeria's Inspector General of Police justified in his warning to the press not to publish election results unless they came from FEDECO or was he trampling upon press freedom in the country?
The Nigerian elections which pro- vided a field day for the politicians to rant, rave and threaten suicide if they lost and for the electorate to indulge freely in riots, also presented the country's journalists with an ethical riddle whose ramifications will be analysed for a long time to come.
Like the entire exercise of proving that the multi-party based parliament- ary democratic system could be successfully practised in an African country, trends in the Nigerian media which is generally regarded as the freest and most vigorous in Africa, were bound to carry the greatest significance to the rest of the continent.
On August 7, the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Sunday Adewusi directed the media houses not to publish any unauthorised results of the elections until given the green light to do so by the Federal Electoral commission.
His reason was that the election results published without PEDECO's authority were calculated and deliberate attempts to confuse members of the public with the intention of creating uncertainties leading to the disturbance of public peace.
In fairness to a man whose respons- Ibility it was to maintain law and order in the country, the warning from the Inspector General of Police must be re- garded as natural and timely.
The newspapers, radio and television stations taking a cue from the fact that it is not everything natural that is right, flouted the police order by publishing detailed "unauthorised" results. Their action did not end there. The editor of the Daily Sketch, Mr. Olusola Oyegbemi and the Daily Sketch newspaper swiftly filed an ex-parte motion with an Ikeja High Court praying that the police order was a nullity.
In addition the Ogun State Broad- casting Corporation also filed another ex-parte motion seeking leave to file a substantive suit that sought to condemn the Inspector General's statement as amounting to intimidation and tyranny.
At this stage it became necessary for an interpretation of section 36 of the constitution which vested the FEDECO to organise the elections. To my lay mind however, such an interpretation had been up-staged by the need to set up a Media Advisory Council under the same constitution to announce the final results of the elections.
VETO
President Shehu Shagari, using his veto for the first and only time in his four year presidency did not sign the bill into an Act but the argument for its passage had been so overwhelming that some of us were left in no doubt that the Fedeco did not have exclusive right to announce the election results.
The muddle was not helped in any way by the conflicting verdicts of the two high court Judges that heard applications against the Inspector General's directive. The Ikeja High Court presided over by Mr. Justice W. Ajao-Oshodi rejected the application, stating that the applicants had not shown the court what irreparable damage they would suffer if the injunction order was not granted.
Meanwhile in Ogun, the State Chief Judge, Mr. Justice Ebenezer Dabasanya- Craig ordered the Inspector General of Police not to enforce his order. He gave the applicant eight days within which to file a substantive suit.
With the qualified exception of Senegal, there is not a single West African country today where the media would have dared challenge the directive of the Inspector General of Police. Neither the Military in power in Ghana, Togo, Benin Mali, Upper Volta, Liberia, nor the one party governments in the Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Sierra Leone have encouraged the free flow of divergent views in their newspapers.
In Nigeria where each of the nineteen states has several newspapers and a radio and TV station, the media and its practitioners have exhibited rare qualities of dynamism and independent mindedness, much to the admiration and envy of their colleagues in the other West African countries.
But did they carry their independence and dynamism too far by flouting a directive from the custodian of peace and order in the country? Or were they tied to the apron strings of the various politicians?
It would be very presumptuous on the part of anybody who is not a Nigerian to attempt to judge over the Nigerian Journalists compliance or non-compliance with the ethics of their profession. At the same time it seems irresistible to comment that Nigeria, being a young democratic nation, its journalists should have taken a leaf from the experiences of their fellow journalists in the older democracies such as France, Britain, Australia where no journalists would publish election results that could vary from the official ones. Their best gamble would be to publish the results released by the Electoral Commission and later point out any detected lapses, discrepancies or abuses.
It must however be conceded that in a situation where many politicians viewed the activities and pronouncements of FEDECO with skepticism with some of them actually threatening the lives of electoral officers if they should release results that were not favourable to them, the media which was largely owned and controlled by the politicians was not likely to behave any differently.
Secondly, the length of time taken by the Fedeco to compile and announce the results aroused the anxiety of both the electorate and candidates over the outcome of the elections and thereby increased the pressure of men whose profession it is to disseminate information, to risk publishing figures collected from other sources such as the political party agents at the various polling stations.
Thirdly, since news is regarded as a marketable commodity the competition among the numerous Nigerian papers. and their Editors to obtain exclusive results of the elections was bound to be fierce and ruthless.
And it would appear that the decision of the Editors to flout the orders of the Inspector General of Police has been vindicated by the overturning of results announced by Fedeco in two states, Ondo and Anambra.
Whether the Nigerian media, by its decision to publish election results that had not been sanctioned by Fedeco should be accused of incitement that resulted in widespread riots, will continue to agitate the minds of academicians for a long time to come.
The relevant lesson however, is that, irrespective of the lapses on the part of everybody - politicians, electorate, journalists, police - the elections in Nigeria have passed off as a successful constitutional experiment whose impact. is being felt in many African countries which are bedevilled with military and one-party dictatorships.
What needs to be done, however, to ensure not only a harmonious relationship between the media and police but also define a healthy role for the journ- alists in subsequent elections is for section 36 of the Constitution to be purged of its nebulous clauses.
