Journalism: A Fertiliser and Combustible for Human Rights Activism - EDU-BIZNEWS

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Thursday, January 23, 2025

Journalism: A Fertiliser and Combustible for Human Rights Activism






The thrust of this lecture is that journalism is a fertiliser and combustible for human rights activism. 

Before moving into the nitty-gritty of the interrogation of this thesis or proposition, let us conceptualise its four pedestals: journalism, fertiliser, combustible and human rights activism.

Journalism is the art and science of generating relevant, useful, newsworthy and interesting contents and disseminating them to timely inform, educate and entertain members of the society, through print, electronic and digital media.

 It is one of the most important, noblest, famous and impactful professions, world-wide. The properly trained individuals (the gentlemen of the press) who engage in this art and science are called journalists (not media-practitioners, please. The concepts - media practice and media practitioners - are misnomers. 


They do not exist). Journalism is a core subset of Mass Communication. Origin of JournalismJournalism is on record to have started or genesised globally with a news sheet, a prototype of the modern newspaper, called Acta Diurna (Daily Acts/Daily Public Records or Daily Gazette) in Ancient Rome under the reign of Julius Ceaser in 59 BC. Carved on stone or metal and hung in message boards in prominent public places, such as the Forum of Rome, Acta Diurna functioned like an early newspaper for the Roman citizenry.  


The Acta Diurna published important daily events such as birth and death announcements and shared gossips for literate citizens to read.Ceaser believed that it was important to inform his citizens of events that would occur, and about Roman politics and the military. Of course, Acta Diurna was not published for each citizen to buy. 

The earliest newspapers, originally handwritten newsletters and precursors to the modern press, eventually started appearing in Europe (Venice, Italy) in 1566.The first printed newspapers (the print media) started publishing weekly in Germany from 1605 and thereafter in other European countries.

 The newspapers were later joined by radio broadcasting in 1906 telecasting in 1923 and digital journalism in 1970, with the latter exploding with the invention of the Internet in 1983. All converge, today, to constitute the modern press. 

In modern context, Journalism is:the collection, preparation and distribution of news and related commentary and feature materials through such print and electronic media as newspapers, magazines, … blogs, webcasts, podcasts, social networking and social media sites and e-mail as well as through radio, motion pictures and television (Encyclopeadia Britannica)Genesis of Journalism in NigeriaJournalism started in Abeokuta, Ogun State, in December 1859, with the establishment of the first newspaper in the country, the Iwe Irohin fun Awon Ara Egba Ati Yoruba, by an Anglican missionary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), Reverend Henry Townsend. It should be noted that the Nigerian press is older that the Nigerian nation by fifty-five odd years, as Nigeria became a nation state only in 1914. This historic feat, by Townsend, of being the first, moreover an individual rather than an organisation or government, to conceive and implement the idea of a system of mass communication for heterogeneous members of society, propelled the founding of many other colonial, post-colonial, pre-independence, and post-independence newspapers and magazines in the country. 

The print media was joined by radio broadcasting in 1933 with the introduction of Radio Distribution System (RDS) (the transmission of the signals of the British Broadcasting Corporation to Nigerians) by the British colonial government. The Western Region Government, led by Chief Obafemi Awolowo, introduced telecasting to Nigeria with the establishment of Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) in Ibadan on October 31st, 1959. Digital Journalism followed much later in the 1990s.
The Place and Purpose of Journalism in SocietyThere is an umbilical relationship between Journalism, journalists and the press. The three concepts are intertwined. We cannot talk about one without the other. 

The Journalism knowledge and training imparted to individuals turn them into journalists. Although the press etymologically derives from the printing press and , inferentially, the print media, namely newspapers, magazines, newssheets, pamphlets and leaflets, the modern  press today refers to the print, broadcast or electronic and the digital media, that is to all the print media, plus radio, television and all Internet-enabled communication media or tools and to all journalists, the journalistically trained individuals, (the gentlemen of the press – no gentlewomen, please) who service or oil the press/media, by generating and disseminating all the relevant and useful contents that these media share, without ceasing. Beyond appropriation therefore, the place and purpose of Journalism and the press in society can, rightly, be submitted to be one and the same. 

Like communication itself, Journalism and the press (the Mass Communication media and journalists) are indispensable to society. Emeritus Professor Olatunji Dare, my former teacher, a first rate Nigerian academic, intellectual and scholar, a renowned journalist and Journalism teacher, in disproving the legendary Aristotle, who submitted that man is a political animal, a theory the whole world hitherto took hook, line and sinker, empirically established that rather than being a political animal, man is, first and foremost, a communicating animal. That is, communication is the most important, pervasive and fundamental of all human activities. 

As he rightly posits:Communication is the fundamental social process and man in society is not basically a political animal, as Aristotle held, but a communicating animal, for politics, like every other activity in society, is based on communication. Communications are much more than the “nerves of government” as Karl Deutsche argued in an influential work that goes by that title, they are the nerves of society itself as Albert Schaffle insisted.As succinctly captured in its credo, and apropos of newspaper, which it is, the Chicago Tribune explains that:The newspaper [press] is an institution developed by modern civilisation to present the news of the day, to foster commerce and industry, to inform [educate]and lead public opinion and to furnish that check upon government which no constitution has been able to provide. (cf. Oloyede, 2008)The roles which Journalism and the press perform in the modern society are numerous. It is the traditional functions of the press to inform, educate and entertain society and to help sell goods and services. Beyond these traditional or customary roles, Journalism and the press help to transmit and advance culture, mirror and reflect society and serve as a forum for the free expression of opinions and ideas. They also serve as a bearer of danger signals, a crusader for social justice, a mass mobiliser, the pillar of public opinion and a most indispensable instrument of governance. From the numerous indispensable functions which Journalism and the press perform in society, it is very clear that they are a concomitant, a sine qua-non of the modern world.There is between the modern press and the public, an implicit contract, a promise that the former will furnish the latter with all the information required to live and function as normal and responsible members of society. (cf MacDougall, 1977)As Radoj (1973) has observed, any modern society today is hardly imaginable without a specialised subsystem which disseminates information internally within that society and externally between societies in the world as a whole.

It is on account of the important roles of journalism and the press in society that the press has, for long, been, unofficially, recognised, world-wide, as the “Fourth Estate of the Realm”. It is also in recognition of this importance that the press is usually given constitutional obligations and some degree of freedom in many countries. In Nigeria, for instance, not minding the derogations of section 45, Section 22 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria provides that:The press, media, television and other agencies of the mass media (sic) shall at all times be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in this chapter and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people.Moreover, the press (journalists/press men) are given special galleries and vantage positions at public and private events to aid the performance of their duties.The Power of Journalism/PressJournalism and the press are often taken or assumed to be very powerful everywhere. 

Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, perhaps the greatest military ruler of all times, aptly captured the power of the press in his classical statement: “four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets”. By powerfulness, of course, is meant the ability and capacity to influence people’s thoughts, beliefs and, consequently, actions. A news or Mass Communication medium conveying messages or information to thousands and millions of homes wields a great deal of influence and power. Notwithstanding that communication effect has long left the hypodermic needle theory level, whatever good, bad, proper or improper message the press conveys has the potential to influence its audience one way or the other.

This perceived power of the press, exercised through publicity, the death-knell of atrocities, seems to be more pronounced in the killing or curtailment of illegalities in fairly sane societies. As Pulitzer analyses it:We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National Conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on. 
There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy. Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press and, sooner or later, public opinion will sweep them away. (Emphasis, mine)In reality however, a country’s press can only be as powerful as the country (the political leadership and the citizenry) makes it.Six important factors normally influence this reality. 

They are:1. the role a country assigns to its press in its polity/affairs, as the press subscribes to the socio-political environment within which it operates;2. the sincerity of a country’s political leadership in allowing the press to play its assigned             role.3. the competence and capability of a country’s journalists;4. the courage of journalists and publishers in the face of governmental intimidation or persecution;5. the efficacy of the judicial system or judiciary; and 6 .the general support of the citizenry for an ideal press.Journalism Education and TrainingJuxtaposed with many other essential activities and professions globally, Journalism was, relatively, late in coming. It has been noted that the first set of printed newspapers did not appear in Germany until 1605. 

Even when they did, there were no Journalism or Mass Communication schools, colleges or universities. In fact, whenever and wherever Journalism first made its debut, anywhere in the world, there were always no trained journalists. As it was in Rome in 59 BC, so it was in Germany in 1605, in Britain in 1622, and in Nigeria in 1859.  The implication of this was that all early Journalism practitioners, learnt (and practised) Journalism on the job. Good language, diction and essay-writing ability were passports to Journalism practice. In fact, some of the early journalists, recruited in this manner, performed so wonderfully that the thought became rife in some parts of the world that the practice of Journalism required no formal training.

For instance, for close to four centuries after modern Journalism or Mass Communication made its debut – that is between 1605 and the 1970s – a school of thought, led by British Journalism practice, espoused the belief that communicators, particularly journalists, were born and not made. That is to say (would-be) good journalists were naturally endowed or providentially given and, ipso facto, needed little or no formal professional education to perform their onerous duties to society (Oloyede, 2023). The main avenue for training was on the job. 

In spite of the longevity of this belief, which partly led to some journalists being derisively referred to as the ‘flotsam and jetsam of society’ by their adversaries at a point in time in Nigeria, it later reasonably faded away.Today, and several decades before now, society has not only accepted adequate preliminary training and continuous education as sine-qua-nons for the effective performance of the daunting tasks of Journalism and Mass Communication practice, it now outrightly demands them. 

As that legendary journalist, Joseph Pulitzer, the patriarch of the old New York World and founder of the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University, in whose excellent memory and honour the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in Journalism is instituted, has rightly, educated the world, “the only position … a man … can successfully fill by the simple fact of birth is that of an idiot, (MacDougall, 1977)Of course, lack of relevant, proper and adequate preliminary education and training by would-be journalists would not only negatively affect the society at all times, it would also be greatly costly to proprietors of journalistic enterprises.

 The late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, himself a great journalist, the first indigenous Governor-General of Nigeria, the first President of Nigeria during the First Republic and the first Nigerian to own a chain of newspapers, recounted in his autobiography, My Odyssey, how lack of the knowledge of press law by the journalists he employed largely led to the collapse of his chain of newspapers, as the journalists kept amassing exemplary and punitive libel damages for his newspaper company, the Zik’s Press. Consequently, when he had the opportunity to establish a university, the University of Nigeria Nsukka in 1955 and formally opened it in 1960, he ensured that a department for the formal educational training of journalists and would-be-journalists, the Jackson College of Journalism, soon came on board in the University in 1961. Of course, a good dose of press law is always a part of Journalism education
As Robert W. Jones has succinctly noted:A good knowledge of the law relating to the press, coupled with some familiarity with the cases where the principles are laid down and explained, should be a part of the professional knowledge of every journalist who aspires to uphold the standard of his calling.

Beyond a good knowledge of press law, an ideal journalist is required to be well grounded in nearly all areas of knowledge. He is told at the Journalism School that he is and should be a specialist-generalist. This means, he should learn and know a lot about all other fields while specialising in Journalism, as it is his duty, in conjunction with his channel or medium (the two constituting the press) to inform, educate and entertain the society and keep it running. He cannot afford to be Heinlein’s human-insect. Robert A. Heinlein, the science fiction author, recommended ideal wide-ranging competencies for every human being. He wrote:A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, programme a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialisation is for insects. (Heinlein, 1973)
This, essentially, is the nature of Journalism training. The would-be journalist is, therefore, given the most liberal education. In addition to all the journalistic skills of newswriting and reporting, interviewing, editing, graphics and design, digitisation, marketing, networking, public communication, etc., he also receives a good dose of the knowledge of sociology, psychology, history, literature, ethics, politics, economics, literary criticism, research and investigation, leadership, human, material, financial and time management, etc.Before leaving the School of Journalism, an ideal journalist is expected to have been imbued with a good nose for news, high reportorial ability, critical thinking, an analytical mind, a sense of sound judgement, a good investigative ability, a good research ability, leadership, marketing and time management abilities, resourcefulness, doggedness, a missionary zeal and, above all, a high level of courage. 

With all these knowledge and skills, he becomes well equipped to practise any of the many genres of Journalism, including print journalism, broadcasting journalism, photo journalism, investigative journalism, sports journalism, business journalism, entertainment journalism, political journalism, crime journalism, data journalism, online/digital journalism, or as political circumstances may determine, underground journalism and suicide journalism.

To practise Journalism effectively, the ideal journalist requires, at all times, a good dose of courage. It is his duty to ferret out and publicise illegalities and atrocities in society through his reports. It is his onus to stand against injustice and oppression and expose them. 

Many a time, the unlettered perpetrators of these evils and atrocities do not understand, and where they do, do not take kindly to journalists and the press exposing them.
 They therefore, view journalists, as, to use Bernard Levin’s words, “vagabonds and outlaws” and orchestrate harm to them. As Levin has counselled however: we [journalists] are and must remain, vagabonds and outlaws, for only by so many remaining shall we be able to keep the faith by which we live, which is the pursuit of knowledge that others would like unpursued and the making of comments that others would prefer unmade.A Typology of JournalistsTypology is an analysis or classification based on categories. Journalists are, usually, generally classified in accord with the genres of journalism they practise. In this lecture, however, I have elected to adopt the taxonomy of journalists/Journalism proposed by one of my cherished lecturers, Prof. Ralph Afolabi Akinfeleye, Akinfeleye branded journalists and journalism into four groups thus:1. cocktail or bread and butter journalists/Journalism – journalists/Journalism whose only pre-occupation is economic or financial gain;2. journalists/Journalism of the next of kin - Journalism/journalists who would hide, neglect or turn around the truth in order not to hurt their relatives, bosses, proprietors, governments, etcetera., irrespective of the enormity or gravity of their misdeeds and the negative consequences to society;3. journalists/Journalism of the general order – unquestioning or subservient journalists or            Journalism: andconscientious journalists/Journalism – journalists/Journalism that ideally abide by the ethics of the profession, upholding truth and societal interest courageously all the time, without minding whose ox is gored.The father of behaviourism in psychology, the famous American psychologist, John B. Watson espoused the belief that any person could potentially be trained to perform any task regardless of genetic background, personality traits and internal thoughts, given the right conditioning. 

As he put it:Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant – chef and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities and race of his ancestors.Although Watson’s proposition neglects congenital and genetic factors, in the same vein, anyone could be properly trained in journalism with a view to making him become a conscientious journalist. Regardless of expectation however, the type of journalist a properly trained Journalism enrollee becomes later is entirely his or her own responsibility. Moreover, unlike Watson’s infants, Journalism enrollees are already adults and not tabulae rasae. Even a Watson’s healthy infant, trained into the best of doctor or lawyer, could later go or grow waywardly. 

The focus of this lecture however is on ideal/conscientious Journalism.Fertiliser and Combustible Generally, fertiliser is a chemical or natural substance added to the soil or land to increase its fertility (languages.oup.com). It is a natural or chemical substance that is spread on the land or given to plants, to make plants grow well. (Cambridge-org.cdn.ampproject.org). It is a “natural or artificial substance containing the chemical elements that improve growth and productiveness of plants.” (Britannica.com).  

Fertilisers enhance the natural fertility of the soil or replace the chemical elements taken from the soil by previous crops.A combustible is a substance that catches fire and burns easily.Fertiliser and combustible are metaphorically used or adopted in this lecture to imply factors that enhance, increase, intensify, actuate and fire productivity or fertility in a certain direction. In effect, the central thesis of this lecture is that journalism is a fertiliser and combustible for human rights activism. 

Before looking into how this is so, let us consider human rights activism.Human Rights ActivismHuman Rights Activism generally refers to engagement(s) in social or political campaign(s) to promote the understanding of and respect for human rights and action(s) against the violation of human rights. 

A campaign is simply “an organised course of action to achieve a goal” (languages.0up.com) while an action is any positive step taken. Any person who engages in social or political action against any potential or actual violation of human rights is a human rights activist.Human rights, the centerpiece of human rights activism are, moral or legal entitlements inherent in all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion or any other status. As set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations on 10th December, 1948, they encompass 30 basic rights, to wit: (i) Right to equality, (ii) Freedom from discrimination (iii) Right to life, liberty and personal security, (iv) Freedom from slavery (v) Freedom from torture and degrading treatment (vi) Right to recognition as a person before the law, (vii) Right to equality before the law, (viii) Right to remedy by competent tribunal (ix) Freedom from arbitrary arrest and exile (x) Right to fair public hearing (xi) Right to be considered innocent until proven guilty (xii) Freedom from interference with privacy, family, home and correspondence (xiii) Right to free movement in and out of one’s country, (xiv) Right to asylum in other countries due to persecution (xv) Right to a nationality and the freedom to change it (xvi) Right to marriage and family (xvii) Right to own property (xviii) Freedom of belief and religion (xix) Freedom of opinion and information (xx) Right of peaceful assembly and association (xxi) Right to participate in government and in free elections (xxii) right to social security (xxiii) Right to desirable work and to join trade unions (xxiv) Right to rest and leisure (xxv) Right to adequate living standard (xxvi) Right to education (xxvii) Right to participate in the cultural life of community (xxviii) Right to a social order that articulates the document (UDHR) (xxix) Community duties essential to free and full development and (xxx) Freedom from state or personal interference in the listed rights. (un.org/en/global-issues/human rights). Anyone who acts in any positive way to protect or promote the observance of any of these rights is a human rights activist or engages in Human Rights Activism.

The United Nations, at the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, charges “every individual and every organ of society” to: … strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms (i.e. all the human rights and freedoms proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and by progressive measures … secure their universal and effective observance.Inherent in this charge is the unverbalised implication that all human beings, ought, of necessity, to be human rights activists. As the human rights are for them, all human beings should logically be voluntary protectors and defenders of human rights. But as the reality of human situation has revealed, this is hardly the case. On account of greed for power, position or money, many human beings infringe on the rights and freedoms of others. Also, on account of ignorance, fear, lack of means and other factors, many human beings succumb to the suppression of their rights as well as those of others.How Journalism Fertilises and Fires Human Rights ActivismI am privileged to have received a very liberal education right from childhood. I grew up in a fairly large polygamous family. Notwithstanding my Yoruba culture which, out of unqueriable respect for elders then, dictated that children remain mute when elders were conversing or communing (Bi agba ba nsoro, omode a dake jeje), even if the elders are towing a wrong path, the young ones in my family were, relatively, allowed to air their views. 

These views were also always respected. The right of freedom of expression was engrained in the family. My family, and especially, my letterless but highly educated parents, (of blessed memory) upheld logical reasoning, justice, fairness, egalitarianism, objectivity, open-mindedness and respect for their rights and the rights of others in all their dealings and actions.My mother, especially, an exceedingly intelligent, hard-working, methodical, contented, loving, caring and superlatively motivating woman, abhors cheating and injustice to no end. She would always stand up for her rights as well as defend the rights of others, in whatever legal and peaceful way she could, including reporting and handing over ethical and legal offenders to law-enforcement agents, the police in particular.Needless to say, my parents’ precepts and, more importantly, practical and living examples rubbed off greatly on me. The Bible teaches us to “train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). I discovered that, like my parents, and in line with their training of me, right from my youth, anywhere I go or find myself, whatever I do, I would detest cheating, injustice and unfairness. I would not cheat others and I would not tolerate being cheated. Moreover, I would defend the rights of others to the best of my ability. 

I can recount very many examples of this, but two examples shall suffice.One, during my secondary education between 1973 and 1978, I had a very close, brilliant and beloved friend who had a medical condition. He was living with his aunt, perhaps because of the medical condition and the cost of his upkeep and education, the aunt and her husband were perpetually hostile to and maltreating him. He would come to school sad and dejected almost on daily basis and recount his serious ordeal to me at our private moments. By our third year in the school, I could no longer calmly absorb the unending tales of unfairness and injustice. To put an end to the unjust situation, I relayed it to my mother and sought her consent to allow my friend to live with me. She consented to my request and we ended the malodorous nonsense. That was a practical example of human rights activism.Two, in 1983, my University of Lagos Bachelor’s degree Mass Communication course-mate and quintessential friend, Babatunde Johnson Isamuko, and I were posted to the then Ogun State Polytechnic, now the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta, for National Service (NYSC). On account of competent and exemplary performance, we were retained after the national service and offered lecturing jobs. About a year on the job, I stumbled on my friend’s monthly pay slip and found that he was placed on Grade Level 8 (as an Assistant Lecturer) while I was given Grade Level 9 as a Lecturer Grade III. Yet, we both possessed a Bachelor’s (Mass Communication) degree each. I immediately called his attention to his unjust treatment and followed it up with a report to our dear former teacher and then Head of our Department, the now Late Dr. Adefemi Sonaike of blessed memory. He also promptly called the attention of the Polytechnic Management to the irregularity. At the end of the day, my post was converted to Assistant Lectureship and salary to Grade Level 8 with the unapologetic excuse that my previous Level 9 offer was an error! At the time and up until tomorrow, I never felt that anything untowardly happened to me! On the contrary, I felt greatly relieved and happy that justice had been served, for “injustice”, as Aristotle teaches us, “arises when equals are treated unequally and unequals treated equally.” This is another evidence of human activism. Such a liberal, just, fair and egalitarian disposition is what Journalism education ingrains in every ideal journalist and would-be journalist. At the Journalism School, the budding journalist is educated that, like the press, a half component of which he is, (the other half component being his channels) he is ‘the eye’, ‘the ear’, and ‘the nose’ of the people/public. It is impressed on him that it is his onerous duty as a ‘gentleman of the press’ to expose the ills and evils in the society and fight social, political cultural and other injustices. He is told that it is his onus to bring up issues in society towards their resolution. It is his duty to alert the society of upcoming dangers and contribute speedily to averting them. It is his duty to uphold and promote public responsibility and accountability of individuals, groups and governments. 

All these, and many more, are inextricably linked with human rights and human rights activism. For a Journalism trainee from an already rich liberal, just, fair and egalitarian background, Journalism becomes a fertiliser and combustible for human rights activism. How did this impact or play out in my case?My Contributions to Scholarship and Human Rights Activism

The hallmarks of an academic are his research (study and publications), teaching and community service. I have elected to present my contributions to knowledge and human rights activism together because most of my scholarly researches and publications that have made the greatest impact have been concerned with the how of the ideal exercise and protection of the rights of freedom of opinion, information, expression and the press guaranteed in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) and Section 39 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. 

For adequate expatiation, it is important to reproduce the three laws in extenso. Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides inter alia:Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.Article 9 of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights states as follows:i. Every individual shall have the right to receive information.ii. Every individual shall have the right to express and disseminate his opinions within the law.The three-pronged Section 39 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria establishes thus:Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1) of this section, every person shall be entitled to own, establish and operate any medium for the dissemination of information, ideas and opinions: provided that no person, other than the Government of the Federation, or of a State, or any other person or body authorised by the President, on the fulfilment of conditions laid down by an Act of the National Assembly, shall own, establish or operate a television or wireless broadcasting station for any purpose whatsoever.

Nothing in this section shall invalidate any law that is reasonably justifiable in a democratic society.for the purpose of preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, maintaining the authority and independence of courts or regulating telephony, wireless broadcasting, television or the exhibition of cinematograph films; orimposing restrictions upon persons holding office under the Government of the federation or of a State, members of the armed forces of the Federation or members of the Nigeria Police Force or other Government security services or agencies established by law.
The three laws protect the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and the press, Article 19 of the UDHR universally, Article 9 of the African Charter complementingly in Africa and Section 39 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution essentially in Nigeria.Before I elected to be trained in Journalism, and Mass Communication, I had what I thought was a very good idea of freedom of expression and information and freedom of the press. What else could freedom of expression be other than the right to say one’s mind. After all, we say in Yoruba “Aile soro ni ibere ori buruku” (failure or inability to speak out is the beginning of misfortune). Once anyone is able to willingly speak out his mind, he has expressed himself. As for freedom of the press, this simply meant, in consonance with the perception of thousands, if not millions or billions of other laymen in the world, what its letters say: the latitude or immunity of press men to publish their generated contents. My Journalism and Mass Communication education rightly changed all those myopic, sloppy and in the case of freedom of the press, dangerous notions of the concepts.

I got educated, through Journalism training, that freedom of expression or communication is often the least understood and always the most denied. The general notion about freedom of communication or expression is that it has only two components: the freedom of thought and speech. Many people and governments believe that once these two components exist, (and they are, most times, not even allowed to function) freedom of communication or expression is in operation.

 This is a myopic view. As I explained in Dismantling The Culture Of Silence: For A Freely Communicating Press And Society (Oloyede,1990) and later in Free Press and Society: Dismantling The Culture of Silence (Oloyede,2008):Freedom of expression does not mean free thought and speech alone; it means freedom of conscience, of thought, of speech or verbalisation and of all communicative or expressive acts including movement, assembly, association, religion and protest. Once any of these components is abridged, freedom of communication or expression is gagged. Just as expression or communication is not limited to only thought and speech, freedom of communication also comprises of freedom of conscience and of all the modes and vehicles through which man conveys his messages and expressively reveals his being. Freedom of communication or expression is, therefore, the liberty of independent communication or expression. It means the condition of communication or expression devoid of undemocratic, unreasonable and or illogical hindrance or restraint. It is the state of being able to communicatingly act to express oneself without arbitrary, despotic or autocratic control.Freedom of expression or communication is a fundamental human right. It is a nature-endowed right, a right-born with man and it is sacred and inviolable.In utility, the unfettered allowance of human expressions establishes and enthrones the mental sovereignty and rational autonomy of the human person. 

Freedom of expression is also indispensable for advancement of knowledge and promotion of the mental well-being of man and mankind – a condition on which many other well-beings depend. Freedom of expression peerlessly promotes the truth. It is a sine-qua-non for creativity and advancement of knowledge. It is a safety valve for peaceful change.More importantly, (and this is not usually, generally, understood or appreciated) freedom of expression or communication is the most important of all fundamental human rights for it protects and safeguards all other freedoms. 

It is the guarantor and palladium of all liberties. All human freedoms have to be exercised and defended through communication or expression. Once communication is repressed, all other human freedoms are concomitantly, automatically suppressed and denied as it becomes impossible to exercise and defend them. 

As John Peter Zenger, the first journalist to establish in court that statements cannot be libel if they are true, postulated, as far back as 1733, “no nation, ancient or modern, ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing or publishing their sentiments but forthwith lose their liberty in general and become slaves.”I noted, earlier, my layman, pre-Journalism-training notion of press freedom as the immunity or latitude of press-men (journalists) to publish their generated contents. 

I also noted that this is, usually, the general view of many non-initiates of Journalism, especially unlettered and non-highly literate members of society. On coming in contact with journalism, I became aware, through study and research in Press Law, that press freedom is not the freedom of the journalist to publish whatever he chooses. Rather, it is: every individual’s freedom to publish his or her views through the instrumentality of the mass media (with all the inequalities of the socio-political and economic structures within which they operate) without fear of prior restraint or arbitrary punishment for whatever is published. (Oloyede, 1996:23)I also learnt that, like freedom of expression, press freedom is equally a fundamental right of all global citizens. In respect of Nigerians:Freedom of the press is a fundamental right of every Nigerian. A fundamental right means a civil liberty. A civil liberty is a personal, natural right protected by the … Constitution. A fundamental right is a restraint on government. The right is regarded as fundamental because it is inherent in the individual citizen (Akinrinsola, 1985:24). Moreover, I became educated that the press and its freedom are organically linked to the people’s freedom (Oloyede, 2004:157) and freedom of expression and the press are central to journalism and its ideal practice.Well prepared by my good liberal background, fired up by my great journalistic knowledge (especially intelligence obtained mostly from Press Law), enamoured by the huge knowledge and wonderful competence of my undergraduate and post-graduate Press Law lecturer (and eventually, my MSc dissertation supervisor) the late Dr. Earnest Adelumola Ogunade of blessed memory and encouraged by the United Nations charge, I developed a great interest in and stupendous passion for Press Law (a course I have now taught at tertiary, level for 41 years, from 1983 to date) and, especially, for freedom of expression and freedom of the press, teaching, researching, explicating and publishing on their meanings, essence, impart, processes, activation, protection and defence, under both democratic civilian dispensations and during military rule. So massive were the interest and passion that about one third of my publications (which include seven scholarly books) are on these fundamental and core human rights. I have researched into and published on, at least, 21 other areas of Journalism and Mass Communication, in national and international scholarly outlets, 

The other areas I have published on include the following: Journalism Training, Photo Journalism, Book and Scholarly Publishing, Xenophobia and Communication, Media and National Security, Public Relations and Democratic Elections, Religion and Media, Media and Information Literacy, Analysis of Online Comments, Communication Research Design, Legislature and the Media, Influence of Nollywood Movies, Communication as Panacea for Eradicating Open Defecation in South-West, Nigeria, Nigerian Media and Covid-19 Pandemic, Visual Portrayal of Monkeypox Outbreak on BBC and Probable Western Media Bias against Africa, Nigerian Newspapers’ Framing of Stories, Public Perception of Radio Messages, Newspapers’ Entertainment Contents and Celebrity Agenda-Setting and Social Media and Online Newspaper Advertising Revenue.

Incidentally, most of my impactful free-expression and press-freedom works were published between 1990 (the year I completed my Master’s Mass Communication programme) and 2012 (the year I was first offered Professorship by three other universities even as an Associate Professor in Redeemer’s University-before the latter elevated me to professorship in 2013.

As I was engaging in the research for the publications, grossly dissatisfied with the repressive socio-political atmosphere of the then military era, whose nature and gravity of repression I was informed about by my Journalism education, and of which freedom of expression and citizens’ right to free press are always the first casualties, I was also constrained and invigorated to engage in the membership and leadership of human rights organisations and in the writing of (a few) articles, in national newspapers, against the repression of free expression and free press, during military rule. I will discuss these under my community service. At this juncture, let us look at some of the publications and their reception. 

On account of space, I will be showcasing only four categories of the publications.Dismantling the Culture of Silence: For A Freely Communicating Press and Society.This triad, a Journalism and Mass Communication title, a human rights work and an intellectually powerful book of general reading, was my first published scholarly contribution of huge impact.While deploring the negative, oppressive and harmful attitudes and actions of individuals, groups and governments who and which suppress freedom of expression, the book educates humanity on the primary importance, fundamentality and inevitability of communication to man and freedom to communication. It establishes the absolute necessity for both press and press freedom in the modern world. It prescribes seventeen compulsory pre-requisites for humanity’s attainment of a freely communicating press and society, to the effect that a majority of men will not only fully understand the fundamental freedom of communication, they will also be ready, fortified and equipped, to defend it at all times.My writing of this book was propelled by my direct observation and empathic experience of the pervasive and painful suppression of freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Nigeria and many parts of the world. Nigeria, of the time, was under the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida, which came into being on August 26, 1985. Before it, the country had been ruled by the Buhari-Idiagbon regime from 31st December, 1984. 

The two military regimes, like the others before them, made the repression of the people’s rights and freedoms their pastime. As I have earlier established, being the most important fundamental rights, the rights to free expression and free press are usually the first casualties of repressive governments.The book adopted the well-considered submission of that irreverent and iconoclastic Kenyan Professor and literary giant, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, in his 1980 classic novel, Devil on the Cross, as its Fundamental. Ngugi wa Thiong’o tellingly proffers in the novel:How can we cover up pits in our courtyard with leaves or grass, saying to ourselves that because our eyes cannot now see the holes, our children can prance about the yard as they like.Happy is the traveller who is able to see the tree stumps in his way, for he can pull them up or walk around them so that they do not make him stumble.The Devil, who would lead us into the blindness of the heart and into the deafness of the mind, should be crucified and care should be taken that his acolytes do not lift him down from the cross to pursue the task of building hell for the people on earth…The first chapter of the book dissects the imposition of the culture of silence on humanity by uncivilised individuals, groups and governments, its origin, trajectory, opposition, conquest and return. It details the cases of human geniuses like Socrates, the world’s famous teacher, Martin Luther King, the Catholic monk, Galileo Galilei and many others who were either officially put to death or monumentally, harassed by their obscurantic societies for daring to air their conscientious beliefs and opinions, which were later found to be true, after irreparably harming these geniuses. It establishes the freedom of communication or expression, that is the right to free thought, free speech and free press, as the most repressed fundamental right over the ages, traces the progress humanity has recorded on its protection and how the gains are being seriously eroded all over the world. 

The chapter also analyses the evil of communication suppression and offers mass education, on the absolute necessity of protecting the fundamental right, as a panacea.The second chapter interrogates the correlation between communication and man, In concordance with Dare’s demolition of Aristotle’s postulation of man as a political animal, and his logical enthronement of man as a communicating animal, the chapter establishes communication – the sharing of thoughts, opinions, ideas, feelings, attitudes, information, etc., within man and between and among human beings – as the most fundamental, the most pervasive, the most ubiquitous and the most important of all human activities. It also proves that communication is compulsory and reflexive. It comprehensively explains the essence or raison d’etre of human communication as-self-expression, confirmation of opinion, self-revelation and definition of human identity, restoration of disturbed emotional balance or equilibrium, maintenance of mental balance or equilibrium, organisation of personal life and society, self-preservation, survival and growth, interaction, elimination of uncertainties, control and predomination of other lower animals, education, motivation, comparison, entertainment, economic survival and viability, surveillance, acquisition and maintenance of power, human immortalisation, conflict resolution and tension reduction, preservation, maintenance, promotion and perpetration of human culture, local and global mobility and transportation, distance elimination or reduction, global linkage or knitting and general growth or progress.


The chapter analyses the special position of speech – the human voice – as the most-important, the most prominent and the most potent of all the natural and artificial media of communication available to man. It explains the unique characteristics of speech as its universality, fundamentality to most other forms of communication, its free nature, its sanctity, inviolability or uninjurability, its comparative authoritativeness and relative credibility, compared with most other media of communication, its relative ease of use and perception, its relative immediate impact and its comparative precision.

The chapter also inquires into communication as an act of courage, dividing human communication into two – conforming and non-conforming communication. It defines conforming communication as one which cowardly, ignorantly, selfishly or diabolically parrots the commonly held opinions, that, which for negative convenience, lives after the world’s view, irrespective of the latter’s irrationality. 

On the parallel line, however, is the positive, individualistic, non-conforming communication, which logically challenges and disproves the orthodox opinion, one which reasonably attacks and dismantles the irrationality of the generally accepted view, a communication which courageously stands against the illogicality of society, as unanimously expressed by a majority of people.The chapter submits that for society to be on the marching line of progress, not only the conforming but more importantly, the non-conforming communication must be allowed free expression. It notes that, because “it is easy in the world (public) to live after the world’s opinion and easy in solitude to live after one’s own” (Ralph Waldo Emerson) “most people are other people (psychologists’ other-directed). Their thoughts are someone’s else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

The chapter also elucidates communication and anonymity, noting that anonymity in communication often encourages conscientious and courageous men to reveal societally-beneficial truths which, they are convinced, must be told in the public interest but which, for reasons miles nobler than cowardice, cannot be told in the open in order to avoid illegal harassment and, sometimes, annihilation. For anonymity not to become a veritable instrument of oppression, victimisation or subjugation, the chapter provides that two conditions should be present: one, the subject of an anonymous communication must be guaranteed the opportunity of immediate exposure to the anonymous communication; two, he must also have an immediate or almost immediate opportunity of responding or reacting to the anonymous communication.The book expounds freedom and communication in its third chapter. 

It establishes freedom of communication or expression as the most important and the least understood of all fundamental human rights. It notes that freedom of expression does not mean free thought and speech alone; it means freedom of conscience, of thought, of speech or verbalisation and of all communicative or expressive acts including movement, assembly, association, religion and protest. It submits that once any of these components is abridged, freedom of communication or expression is gagged.

The chapter explicates the need for freedom of communication with eleven reasons. One, freedom of communication or expression is a fundamental right. As such, it is sacred and inviolable. Two, the silencing of human expressions violates the mental sovereignty and rational autonomy of the human person. Three, freedom of communication or expression peerlessly underlines and promotes the Truth. Unless all opinions are given a free hearing, we cannot be confident that we have the Truth about anything. Four, freedom of expression or communication is indispensably essential for advancing knowledge. Five, it is also essential and indispensable for promoting the mental well-being of mankind – a condition on which all other well-being depends. Six, it is a sine-qua-non for creativity. Seven, it provides human species the opportunity of learning from their fellow men. Eight, it saves humanity from the possibility of permanent commitment to falsehood. Nine, freedom of communication or expression is the foundation of democracy. Ten, it is a safety-valve for peaceful change. Eleven, it safeguards and protects all other human freedoms and liberties. This third chapter also discusses freedom, communication and suppression. It analyses derogations from freedom of communication or expression dividing them into two categories – justifiable and unjustifiable derogations. It provides five basic conditions for justifiable derogations as follows:its purpose must logically be for the protection of everyone in society and not for some individuals of groups or for some selfish interests;it must be rooted or embedded in a living constitutional or legal provision and not whimsically dished out; it must have been coded and encoded before becoming operational, that is, brought to the knowledge of everyone within the society, not retroactively made and or enforced;it must apply equally to everybody, not selectively enforced (no sacred-cowism); andits mode of enforcement must be strictly judicial, not whimsical or extra-legal.Any derogation on freedom of expression that does not satisfy or meet these five basic conditions belong to unjustifiable derogations.The fourth chapter of the book explicates the modern press and society. It submits that after the human speech, the press is the next most important system of communication available to man. Tracing the etymology of the term, press, to the print media, especially the newspaper, it explains that the modern press today refers to the collectivity of the news media – the newspaper, magazine, radio and television.

 These news media collectively possess six basic characteristics which serve as their source of strength and bestow on them the primacy they generally enjoy over all media and mass media of communication. The six characteristics are:reproduction, amplification and transmission – that is the capacity and power of amplification, mass reproduction and mass transmission of messages to a very heterogeneously large audience.speed – the capacity of instantaneous transmission of messages to a large, mass audience;simultaneous reception – the possession of an in-built system which facilitates a simultaneous or almost simultaneous reception of their messages by a large audience;fidelity – their peerless capacity, compared with most other media, for maintaining, to a large extent, the exactitude of encoded messages, in spite of the great amplification and speedy transmission of such messages;universal or mass access – their openness to and admitability of all members of society who may wish to read, view or listen to their messages or, for a considerably just cause, be featured by them; and believability/credibility – their perception by society as being more largely credible than other interpersonal and mass media of communication.Analysing the function and indispensability of the press to society, the chapter submits that ever since its foundation, the press, throughout the world, has generally been in the forefront of social, educational and political progress. It has been a standard bearer in the struggle against poverty, oppression, deceit, tyranny and other clogs and enemies of mankind. It has remained a most important and indispensable factor in jostling entrenched atrocities and dismantling robust oppression. 

The American press, for instance, fought in the struggle against British rule until independence was attained in 1786. The Latin American press fought against Spanish domination and, similarly, the Nigerian press fuelled the hostility against British colonialism until it terminated in 1960. Without the press, there could have been an enlightenment of some sort, but the educational revolution of the scale of the period immediately succeeding the discovery of the printing press would have been most unthinkable. Without the press, it is doubtful whether there could have been an American or even a French revolution.The chapter analyses the numerous specific functions which the press performs for society- its information, education, entertainment and cultural roles, its service as a mirror of society, a forum for the free expression of ideas and opinions, a bearer of danger signals, its roles as a crusader for social justice, a mass mobiliser, the pillar of public opinion, a most indispensable instrument of governance and its function of ensuring accountability and responsibility of truly democratic societies. 

The chapter concludes with an examination of press, society and neutrality and submits that the ideal relationship between the press and the citizens on one hand, and between the press and the government, on the other, should be that of independent and neutral partnership regulated by public interest. The book in its fifth chapter looks into the institution of press freedom, the meaning of the concept, its nature and functions. It analyses several authoritative definitions of press freedom, including Jakande’s which describes it as the freedom of the citizen to know the truth and to express himself within the law and the freedom of the ruler to know the thoughts of his subjects and to be guided by them. The chapter also adopts Hamilton’s definition which explains freedom of the press as: “the right to publish, with impunity, truth, with good motives, for justiable ends, though reflecting on government, magistracy or individuals” (Hamilton, cf  Onagoruwa, 1976).On the nature of press freedom, the chapter embraces Justice Frankfurter’s perspective that “the liberty of the press is no grater or no less that the liberty of every citizen”. It holds, in accord with Walter Lippman, that the concept of press freedom, as well as freedom of speech, operates on the rational principle of a free market place of ideas. As Lippman puts it, “the theory of a free press is that the Truth will emerge from free reporting and discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account”.

The chapter discusses eleven functions which it posits press freedom performs as follows:the magnification of the power of human communication;the strengthening of the power of protest;the fostering and safeguarding of the people’s right to know;the assurance of public responsibility and accountability;the general catalysation of human progress;service as a safety value for peaceful change;the shielding and protection of all other freedoms;the moderation of society’s psychic equilibrium;the indication of the level of justice in society;the reflection of the level of national maturity; and the scaling of societal intelligenceThe sixth and final chapter of the work entitled Towards A Freely Communicating Press and Society is backgrounded by Philpot’s (Curran John) classical position that: “the condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he breaks, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.” (Philpot, 1790). The chapter elucidates a freely communicating press and society and submits 17 provisos for the attainment of a freely communicating press and society.As provided in the chapter, a freely communicating press is a free and independent press – one that is not subjected to arbitrary, despotic, illegal or autocratic control; a press that is free to gather information, publish the information gathered and protect the sources of the information without any undemocratic, self-serving, or illogical inhibition or restraint; a press which operates freely and independently without any unjustifiable derogation or detraction from its ethical, editorial and legal freedoms. In essence, a free press with only a very few logical, legal and democratic restrictions on its freedom – restrictions which are justifiably meant, and are generally perceived, to intrinsically protect, the larger, better interest of the citizens and the society.In the same vein, a freely communicating society is defined as a society whose human constituents generally enjoy the right of free expression, that is, the right to seek, receive, hold and impact ideas, opinions, knowledge and intelligence through any medium without let or hinderance. It is a society whose members and government hold totally sacrosanct the freedoms of thought and conscience and which does not derogate, except justifiably, from the individual’s freedom of speech, movement, assembly, association, religion and protest. In a freely communicating society, not only are citizens free to air their views and expose themselves to all possible opinions on all public and private issues without vetting or fear of victimisation, persecution or reprisal, they also have the right to own, establish or operate any or all of the media of communication through which such views are aired. The 17 prerequisites the chapter recommends for the attainment of a freely communicating press and society are:constitutional guarantees for free expression in all countries;mass education for all peoples;a free, independent and liberal judiciary;a proper understanding of the role and place of the modern press and journalist;a universal and catholic understanding of the meaning and value of criticismabrogation of all laws which negate or contradict the fundamental right of free communication or expression;respect for the rule of law by governments;respect for the rule of law by members of the armed forces;special protection for journalists and press men;ethical and professional responsibility on the part of journalists and press men;the unchaining of the rights of civil servants to free expression;adequate observance of freedom of information;the democratisation of news media ownership;an average economic standard for all peoples;minimal level of corruption in all countries;the concerted efforts of men and organisations specially placed to recognise and fight for the redress of infringements on freedom of expression; andthe concerted efforts of all members of the human race.As noted in the prologue to the chapter:Ignoble essays at muffling the critical voice will always be made.Inhuman efforts at stifling the consciously writing hands will always be expended.Ignorant, self-serving and diabolical individuals, groups and governments will always endeavour to suppress free expression and impose a culture of silence on man and society.It is the duty of humanity not only to provide the instrumentality for redressing these base attempts, but also and, more importantly, to erect and institutionalise the barricades and fortifications that will continuously frustrate them.This is the central thesis of the work.The foreword to the book, described by Chief Ebenezer Babatope, in a review in the Sunday Tribune of June 17, 1990 as “a masterpiece … of the best books ever written in Nigeria by a Nigerian on press freedom” was written by a foremost lawyer and human rights activist, Mr. Femi Falana, who also volunteered to anchor its launching. The now late but highly revered former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Mr. Alao Aka-Bashorun Esquire of blessed memory, eulogised the book as “… a compulsory reading for all lovers of democracy”. The great and highly respected iconoclast, educationist and human rights activist, the Late Dr. Tai Solarin, in an unsolicited written speech he delivered at the launching of the book at the Nigeria Labour Congress Secretariat, Lagos on 9th February, 1991 commended the book thus: “This book should be read by every Nigerian who wants to carve a niche for himself/herself in whatever consideration in this Republic.”Dr. Tai Solarin was, in fact, the first person to arrive at the venue of the launching of the book. That venue itself was paid for by the first and, for now, the only Nigerian and African Nobel Laureate in Literature, himself a great human rights activist, Prof. Wole Soyinka, who also chaired the book’s launching. You can imagine my overwhelming excitement, when on visiting Professor Soyinka, after his reading of the roneod copy of the book, he shook my hand vigorously several times and hugged me in serious congratulations! He there and then volunteered to pay for the NLC Secretariat Hall where the book was to be launched and , at my request, pleasurably agreed to chair its launching. At the launching of the book, at which the Late Dr. Olu Onagoruwa, who would later serve as Nigeria’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation was the Chief Launcher, and the then President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Olisa Agbakoba, was the reviewer, Prof. Wole Soyinka publicly announced his donation of a portion of the yearly royalties on his books to me for writing such a wonderful book! The launching of the book was a Mecca, or do we say a Jerusalem, of sort. It attracted very many journalists and a substantial number of the Nigerian human rights community. The Sunday Magazine, (TSM) of February 17, 1991, in reporting it, said “It was like a re-incarnation of the botched national conference”.There is also another important element of the book’s launching that must not be missed out. At the time, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Dr. Tai Solarin and Mr. Femi Falana were not seeing eye to eye. They were in fact, attacking each other on the pages of newspapers. The three of them sat together on the high table at the launching of the book! This did not escape the Newbreed magazine, which exclaimed and wondered, in its April 15, 1991 report on the event, how Oloyede was able to bring them together. The Newbreed, in its publication entitled “Book Launch Unites Activists” wrote: “Lord knows how he contrived it but Oloyede brought together some antagonists to sit side by side as friends on the same table!”I must also note that, like Prof Wole Soyinka, that ‘immortal’ legal institution, committed rule of law crusader and legendary human rights activist, the Late Chief Gani Fawehinmi, not only applauded the book, he seriously congratulated me for publishing it and gave me an autographed complimentary copy of his book, Murder of Dele Giwa: The Right of a Private Prosecutor, in addition to attending the launching of the book by proxy.The Amnesty International, Nigerian, Section, sent me a Letter of Appreciation in which it “sincerely” thanked me for my “involvement in good things which Amnesty International stands for”.The first civilian Governor of Lagos State, and a foremost Nigerian journalist, Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande, sent me a generous cheque immediately after the launching of the book, the attendance of which he involuntarily missed. On the basis of reading my work, the book, alone, he sent me a letter appointing me his Press and Private Secretary, two years later in 1992 while contesting for Nigeria’s presidency under the Social Democratic Party. On reading a copy of the book, Prof James Halloran, the then Director of the Centre for Mass Communication Research, University of Leicester, United Kingdom, which had offered me admission into its MPhil/PhD programme, since 1984, and offered me a partial scholarship, with only my Bachelor’s Mass Communication degree from the University of Lagos, seriously praised me, for what he considered as my “considerable achievements” lamenting the inability of his Centre to have me study with it free of charge. In his congratulatory letter to me, he described the British, Thatcher, government of the time, because of me, as “a philistine, anti-intellectual government” and followed this up with a letter of support, to the Federal Ministry of Education, for my application for Commonwealth Scholarship. Although the book was launched a week after my MSc Mass Communication graduation, where University of Lagos pronounced me her first MSc Mass Communication student to graduate with Distinction in 10 years of running the programme, I wrote and published the book as a University of Lagos, B.Sc. Mass Communication degree holder.A short history or background to the publication is worth presenting. As I noted in the preface to its second edition, published in 2008 by Stirling Horden Publishers, it was a product of stupendous conviction, missionary zeal and gargantuan resoluteness. On its completion in 1988, I sent its manuscript to six major Nigerian publishers with high hopes that it would be a publisher’s delight on account of its qualitative and humanistic content. Alas, the publishers, one after the other, subtly, diplomatically, turned down the manuscript. They all acknowledged that its subject and treatment were very good, even excellent for publishing, but their “publishing interest” was not in the area of the manuscript’s subject at that period.I was, naturally downcast and discomfited. My enthusiasm on a work in which I had invested countless days and sleepless nights of brainstorming and labour and in whose excellent quality I believed, was dampened. I wondered ceaselessly what could make reputable publishers run away from publishing a good, critical and humanity-benefitting manuscript! Then, it occurred to me that the publishers’ responses, though seemingly directed at my work, were actually meant for the repressive socio-political environment under the Ibrahim Babangida regime. As a reminder, that was 1988. Barely two years before this period, Dele Giwa, Newswatch’s founding Editor-in-Chief, one of Nigeria’s finest journalists and a critic of the Babangida regime, was unprecedently letter-bombed out of existence, in circumstances linking the Babangida government with the murder. Of course, before and after 1988, there was increasing repression of the freedom of speech, of the press and of other civil liberties. So, the publishers were being sentimentally, fearfully careful not to incur the whimsical wrath of the repressive government by publishing my harmless work. But then, suddenly, a life-like came for the manuscript.Among my Higher National Diploma (HND) Mass Communication students at the Ogun State Polytechnic of that time was one mature, experienced, vibrant and iconoclastic Biodun Bello (Double B). Biodun Bello was a refreshing, respectable, knowledgeable and respectful student. We related well and often shared ideas. He believed that the manuscripts should not die unpublished, unsung and, in no time, came up with an unusual idea as a solution. I was to publish the work myself by making a very good typist to stencil and roneo it. We would then collate the duplicated pages and give them to road-side printers to bind and give cardboard covers. That was how, in 1988, one hundred copies of the unusually made book were first published and sold to the public!As far I was concerned, I had practically dismantled the culture of silence, the oppressive and humanity-harming practice of numerous individuals, groups and governments who and which forcibly suppress freedom of oppression, which my book was principally canvassing against. But unknown to me, the book, fearfully rejected by Nigerian publishers in 1988, would still be re-published and launched nationally under the same repressive political atmosphere.About two months after releasing the roneod book to the public, one of my female HND students walked into my office to inform me that one Sir Olujare Oyesola, the then Principal of School of Basic Studies, Owode, Ogun State, read her copy of the roneod book and was strongly interested in republishing it. She said the man requested to see me. Of course, I enthusiastically met with Sir Oyesola, who was highly impressed with the content of the book. We there and then, agreed to jointly republish it.The second edition of the book entitled Free Press and Society: Dismantling the Culture of Silence, was also published, by Sterling Horden Publishers in 2008, in a similar unsought manner. Its publisher, Prof. Andrew Okwilagwe, then of the University of Ibadan, came across a copy of the first edition at the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic Library and requested me to review it for re-publishing.On account of the repressive socio-political atmosphere of the Babangida regime, of the late 1980s and early 1990s, we did not believe that the government would allow us to launch the book. This was a military regime that was paranoid about freedom of expression and freedom of the press. In addition to suppressing these freedoms, the government was also in the habit of constantly arresting and incarcerating citizens who published whatever it either did not want to hear or did not want citizens to hear. I was, therefore, not only prepared for arrest and incarceration on 9th February, 1991, the day of the book’s launching, |I also had the title of my contemplated imprisonment memoirs, The Futility of Tyranny, at the ready. My only concern then was my illiterate mother who followed me to the launching. The strong possibility of Babangida government’s negative reaction motivated me to personally visit all possible supporters of free expression and free-press, giving them a roneod copy each of the publication to peruse before the launching. As Robert Serumaga submitted in Return to The Shadows, “to fight without weapon is sheer false heroism”. To suffer harassment and incarceration for one’s conscientious convictions would not be a problem, but it would be important to have nationally and internationally respected citizens who would constantly call attention of the world to my unlawful incarceration. That was to be my weapon. If there is anything dictators detect, it is the constant publishing of their illegalities or atrocities.Publications in the Constitutional Rights JournalAfter Dismantling The Culture Of Silence…, my research and publications on journalism and human rights related subjects, shifted to a foremost constitutional platform, the Constitutional Rights Journal. This journal, published by the Constitutional Rights Project, of which another top-tier human rights activist, Mr. Clement Nwakwo, was Editor-in-Chief, was a leading human rights journal in Nigeria. Between 1992 and 1995, I published four scholarly and incisive articles in the journal. All the articles employed the historical-legal research method.My first contribution to the journal, in 1992, entitled Freedom of Expression and Nigeria’s State Security Decree, appraises the State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree No.2 of 1984, promulgated by Major General Muhammadu Buhari, head of Nigeria’s fourth military government, and retained by the Babangida regime which was still in power at the time of the publication. Although enacted on 9th February, 1984, it was made effective, retroactively, from 31st December, 1983, the day the Buhari regime usurped political power through a coup-d’etat. An omnibus detention-without-trial law, the decree empowers the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters to detain any person he is satisfied “has been concerned in acts prejudicial to State Security of has contributed to the economic adversity of the nation or (is) in the preparation or instigation of such acts” for a renewal period of three months. It suspends Chapter IV (the fundamental human rights provisions of the 1979 Constitution and precludes the courts from inquiring into any act done or intended to be done under it.The article traces the three amendments introduced to the decree by the Babangida regime, analyses the socio-political context of the decree, its application in detaining very many human rights activists and journalists who merely exercised their freedoms of expression and the press and the interpretation of the decree by the courts. It, thereafter, examines whether the decree derogates from the freedom of expression of Nigerians or not. Prominent among the human rights activists that the Buhari and Babangida regimes detained with the decree are: the Late Dr. Tai Solarin, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, Mr. Gbenga Olawepo, the Public Relations Officer of the proscribed National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and a final year Mass Communication student of the University of Lagos, Dr. Tunji Braithwaite, a Second Republic politician and famous Lagos lawyer, Professor Obaro Ikime, a University of Ibadan History lecturer and Leader of the University’s Chapel of the Resurrection and Kehinde Adebiyi, a member of Gani Fawehinmi Solidarity Association (GFSA). Ten journalists, including Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande were also detained under the decree while more than five newspapers and magazines were shut for weeks. Each and every of these cases are contextually reviewed. The study establishes six findings as follows: One, the State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree, 1984 was merely being used to punish expressions which have nothing to do with state security and comments which punished citizens, journalists and journals have the fundamental right to make in accordance with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 9 of the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights and the slightly modified Section 36 of the 1979 Nigerian Constitution. Two, sequel to the above, the objective of Decree 2 of 1984, in relation to expressions, seemed to be the suppression of opposing or unwanted views and opinions. Three, since the ingredients of offence are not defined in Decree 2 and since the determination of expressions that constitute threats to national security is left to the sole ‘wisdom’ and wide discretion of an individual (i.e. the Chief of General Staff), there could hardly be an objective yardstick for measuring punishable expressions under the decree.Four, the unlimited jurisdiction granted the Chief of Staff in solely determining punishable expressions under Decree 2 was capable of being abused.Five, the application of Decree 2, in the wake of the April 22, 1990 coup, to punish citizens and media, who and which merely commented on the coup, showed that the Babangida regime did not understand the fundamental freedom of expression guaranteed by the various international legal instruments and the Nigerian constitution. Neither did it demonstrate an understanding of the proper role of the press in a democratic or reasonable society.Six, freedom of expression being one of the essential conditions upon which the security of every nation is founded, the use of Decree 2 for the suppression of opposing or unwanted expressions was capable of defecting the intended purpose of the decree, which was the maintenance of the security of the State. On the contrary, such might generate State insecurity.The article concluded that for a democratic or reasonable society to thrive, the remedy for objectionable ideas must be counter arguments. The discontented must be allowed to talk in order to know the cause(s) of their discontent and take steps to end those cause(s), Justice Hughes underlines this in the American case of DeJonge v. Oregon when he submits:The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the over-throw of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsible to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means.My second academic paper in the Constitutional Rights Journal addresses The Constitutional Basis of Press Freedom in Nigeria, 1960 – 1992. Noting press freedom as one of the most fundamental rights of every citizen, it defines it as the liberty to publish one’s thoughts without fear of restraint or of unreasonable or arbitrary punishment for whatever is published. It traces the genesis or etymology of press freedom constitutionalisation to Sweden and provided the historical background of press freedom in Nigeria. It thereafter examines and comparatively reviews all the constitutional provisions on press freedom in all the Nigerian constitutions from 1960 to 1992.These are Section 24 of the 1960 Constitution, Section 25 of the 1963 Republican Constitution, Sections 21, 36 and 41 of the 1979 Constitution, and Sections 22, 38 and 43 of the 1989 Constitution.The study establishes that press freedom became constitutionalised in Nigeria on the recommendations of the Minorities Commission, which was set up on the eve of Nigeria’s independence to examine how the rights and interests of Nigerian minorities could be preserved in the emergent nation. The committee suggested the incorporation of a guarantee of fundamental rights, including the right of free expression, into the Independence Constitution.Secondly, except for the substitution, with “the State” and “the Federation” respectively, of the “Crown” in Section 24(2) of the 1960 Constitution, which depicted the then dominion status of Nigeria, the constitutional guarantee of press freedom in the 1963 Constitution is a word-for-word reproduction of the 1960 provisions.Thirdly, juxtaposed with the 1960 and 1963 Constitutions, the 1979 Constitution provided Nigerians a higher degree of press freedom in two respects: it created in Chapter II (Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy) some obligations for the Nigerian press for which it requires it to be free; it also provides, in Section 36 (2), the right of media ownership, though qualified, for Nigerians.Fourth, the meaning of concept, medium contained in the media ownership provision of Section 36 (2) goes beyond the conventional mass communication channels to include schools as adjudicated in Okogie and Ors. V. Attorney General of Lagos State.Fifth, under Section 36 (2) of the 1979 Constitution, both the Federal and State Governments have equal rights and powers in owning, establishing and operating any or all of the broadcast media. This addresses the needless controversies, during the Second Republic, between the Federal Government on one hand and the State Governments on the other.Six, the language of Section 41 of the 1979 Constitution, as well as section 43 of the 1989 Constitution, which provides for derogations from five of the 11 fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution, offers a wide latitude for state regulation of press freedom guaranteed in Sections 21 and 36.Seven, the press freedom provisions of the 1989 Constitution are largely similar to those of the 1979 Constitution.The paper recommends a more positive, more active and more definitive constitutional guarantee of press freedom in Nigeria to counter the dangers posed to the foremost freedom by the wide language of Sections 41 and 43 of the 1979 and 1989 Constitutions. It also suggests a freedom of information legislation for Nigeria, in line with William Swindler’s logic that “freedom to publish news and comments is of little value without the corollary freedom to gather the news”. This recommendation was eventually implemented by Nigeria in 2011 with her enactment of a Freedom of Information Act after several years of unrelenting activism by several human rights groups, journalists and individuals.My third human rights paper in the Constitutional Rights Journal was published by the journal during the draconian rule of General Sanni Abacha. The article addresses The Press, Military and Freedom of Expression. It examines, especially, the peremptory closure and proscription of the news media which had become the pastime of military rulers in Nigeria. Starting with the ban of the Cross River State – owned Chronicle by the then military governor, Brigadier-General U. J. Esuene, during the Gowan regime, over 16 newspapers and magazines and one radio station, Ogun Radio have been affected in 23 years of military rule as of the period.The article analyses the process of these peremptory closures/prescriptions, and the military rulers’ perennial arguments that their actions were always in line with the law. For instance, while defending the Public Offiicers (Protection Against False Accusation) Decree (Decree No. 4, 1984) General Mamman Jiya Vatsa, a major player in military rule in Nigeria before his execution for an alleged coup detat by the Babangida regime, had published:The basic role of government is to govern. Its shade or colour or professed ideology exists to regulate the affairs of men and women in a polity, be it in a country, a state or local government or village level. Its existence is contingent on the existence of every other human institution including the press. What it says is the law. What it does is assumed to be in the best interest of the people it governs. The press, therefore, is a government institution (New Times, 1985) (Emphasis, mine).The paper establishes that Nigerian military governments seem to have a simplistic understanding of the complex relationship between the institution of governments on one hand and between government and important social institutions, such as the press, on the other. It holds that while the closure of media houses by the military may, sometimes, be lawful, they are glaringly arbitrary, autocratic, despotic and antithetic to the rule of law. In contradistinction with the mindsets of military rulers, as encapsulated in Vatsa’s submission, and in line with the ideal logic of rule of law, provided by the famous jurist and former Chief Justice of Australia, Sir John Latham, “it is not our law that what is done officially is law, our law is that what is done officially must be done in accordance with law” (cf Onagoruwa, 1980). Moreover, every word or action of government cannot and should not be perceived or interpreted as law, more so when such is contrary to the rule of law. The 1884 submission of Mr. Justice Mathews in Hurtado v. California is worth ringing for its outstanding logic and eternal relevance. Mr. Justice Mathews posits:It is not every act, legislative in form that is law. Law is something more than mere will exerted as an act of power … Arbitrary power, enforcing its edicts to the injury of the persons and property of its subjects is not law, whether manifested as the decree of a personal monarch or of an impersonal multitude… After the publishing of my third article by the Constitutional Rights Journal, the journal’s Editorial Committee, through its Editor-in-Chief, sought my consent for permanent inclusion in its list of contributors. I published one more article, apropos of journalism and human rights, with the journal. This has to do with the very essential shield right, the right of journalists to protect their sources of information. Entitled Journalists and Disclosure of Sources, the paper examines in detail, the professional claim by journalists, often statutorily backed, to non-disclosure of sources of information, confidential notes, tapes or films.The import of the shield right is that newsmen should be legally shielded or protected from being compelled to disclose their sources of information. The article notes that the shield right is very important to the effective practice of journalism and to the larger society. Without it, sources of, especially, non-conforming communication, will either be reluctant to volunteer information or be exposed to all sorts of hazards. As such, society will be denied useful information and suffer greatly. As aptly put by Justice Balogun in Innocent Adikwu v. Federal House of Representatives (1982) 3 NCLR 412:If newsmen were compelled to disclose their sources of information, they would soon be bereft of information, which is in the public interest to make known. Their sources of information would dry up. Wrong-doing would not be disclosed. Charlatans would not be exposed. Unfairness would not be remedied. Misdeeds and serious faults and mistakes in the corridors of power and elsewhere would never be made known to the public …Ojelade also emphasises this when he notes:When one remembers the celebrated Watergate scandal involving United States President, Richard Nixon, the role of a journalist as a social engineer and the press as a formidable institution becomes indisputable. Without maintaining and insisting on professional secrecy, most reliable pieces of information that threaten individual or government probity and accountability will be inaccessible and difficult to unearth.The paper analyses the two modes of recognition open to the shield right – the constitutional and the statutory routes. It investigates the place of the right in many countries of the world, including the United States (US), Britain, Sweden, and Germany, before zeroing in on Nigeria. It establishes that while the shield right is absolutely recognised in Sweden, Germany, and many states in the US, the US Federal Government does not have any national law fully protecting this right. In fact, as per Farber and the New York Times Company V. New Jersey, 78 N.J. 259, 394 A – 2d 330 (1978), the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not grant American journalists the right to absolute confidentiality when disclosure is compulsory for the proper determination of justice. The situation is also analogous in Britain. In respect of Nigeria, after reviewing several relevant cases including Innocent Adikwu Federal v. the Federal House of Representatives (1982) 3 NCLP 412, Banji Ogundele and African Newspapers Ltd v. The President, Justice Karibi-Whyte and the Federal Attorney-General, Olusola Oyegbami & Ors. v. Attorney General and Ors., Tony Momoh v.. Senate of the National Assembly, Senate v. Momoh and Vera Ifudu v. Nigerian Television Authority, the paper establishes that the operative Nigerian Constitution of the time does provide some degree of protection for journalists’ shield right. It, however, demands for the press a distinct shield protection, as obtained in many modern democracies, for it to be able to efficiently and fearlessly carry out its constitutional obligation of upholding “the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people”.Press Freedom in Nigeria: A Critical Analysis of Salient IssuesThis title is the next relevant publication to this Inaugural Lecture. After the four papers on journalism and human rights issues in the Constitutional Rights Journal, I thought of how to make all my messages on the foremost fundamental right of press freedom to reach a larger number of people. Journal publications, as good and relevant as they are to academic progress, suffer from restricted circulation among interested students and experts in respective fields. I therefore, decided to review all my scholarly contributions on the subject, improve upon them, bring them together, as I noted in the introduction to the work, “on account of their thematic harmony and the eternal relevance of their logic” and publish them in book form.I backgrounded the new work with a detailed conceptual analysis of press freedom and interrogated how and where the concept evolved from, the denotations generally attached to it ab initio, how it is perceived in various socio-political systems, and the problems associated with evolving an ideal variant of the concept. My analysis attempts to answer these corner-stone questions with a view to a broad understanding of the subject. It concludes that:since the press structure, including its freedom, is always determined by the socio-political        structure …, an ideal press freedom that will be equally enjoyable by or equally beneficial to all members of society, irrespective of socio-political class, will always be difficult, if not impossible to perfectly, effectively conceive and, much more, implement. (Oloyede, 2008).In spite of this reality, the background analysis gives three recommendations for ameliorating the identified limitations of press freedom in all socio-political systems, as follows:the democratisation of news media ownership and control – a system where professional, labour, community and other groups would own and control the news media in their own interest and that of the society, as the nature of ownership and control play on overriding role in the definition and practice of press freedom;the introduction of a system of state subsidy for the marginal press, i.e. the news-media owned and operated by minority groups within larger geographical or political macrocosms, as such media largely represent the neglected (unchosen views in society; and the introduction of a system of public service broadcasting as operated in the British System.The work, in one of its newly introduced chapters, also critically reviews  Section 120 of the 1982 Electoral Act, which the Federal Government, at its enactment, said was essentially meant “to ensure fair and equal opportunities” in terms of equal media time and coverage, “for all registered political parties” during an election. Section 120 of the 1982 Electoral Act provides as follows:All the mass media controlled by the Federal and State Governments shall be brought under a National Advisory Council three months before and a month after an election. The National Advisory Council shall consist of one representative selected by each political party contesting an election during an election year.The Chairman shall be elected from among the members and an official of the Federal Electoral Commission shall be nominated as Secretary for the Council by the National Electoral Commission.The National Advisory Council on the Mass Media shall let the programmes appear on Television network and on Radio broadcasting to ensure a free and fair election.Sound as its intents may be this enactment, it was noted, runs counter to, is grossly violative of and is inconsistent with the freedom of expression and the press provisions guaranteed in Sections 21, 36 and 41 of the then operative 1979 Constitution. In accord with the decision of the Supreme Court of Miami in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo:The choice of materials to go into a newspaper and the decisions made as to the limitations on … content and treatment of public issues and public officials – whether fair or unfair – constitute the exercise of editorial control and judgement…The Nigerian press cannot, definitely, have the liberty to uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people if, for whatever reason, it is not free from the editorial thumb of government. This contradiction becomes very glaring when it is realised that election periods are some of the best of times when the press can ensure the accountability of the government to the people.Moreover, in a democracy, neither the executive nor the legislative arm of government has the right to dictate to the press what it MUST publish. “Once the government moves in to tell a medium what it must publish, there is a basic question whether such a command is not an abridgement of the free of the press” (Roger, 1972).In his commendatory foreword to this book, Press Freedom in Nigeria: A Critical Analysis of Salient Issues, my Communication Law lecturer at the University of Lagos, the Late Dr. Earnest Adelumola Ogunade of blessed memory, greatly appreciated “the frankness, the candour and the keen insight with which the author (Oloyede) presents his views”. He commends, concerning the book, that “Every thinking Nigerian who is really interested in the national’s democratic welfare anchored on a free press ought to read this important and challenging book” (Oloyede, 2008). Also, in reviewing the work before its publication, the then Ag. Dean of Law, University of Ibadan, Barrister J. D. Ojo, LLM, PhD (London), who later co-supervised my doctoral thesis, submitted: “There is no doubt that Oloyede has done a lot of research on this topic [Press Freedom] to justify it as a good book worthy of publication”. He insisted that this assessment be published with the book.I must report that the book lived up to its billing in terms of intended broad circulation. From the reports I received from the University of Ibadan Bookshop, where it was principally marketed, one male European on visiting the bookshop bought all the remaining copies of the book (20 copies) at a time.The Press under Military Rule in Nigeria (1966-1993) An Historical and Legal NarrativeThis 179-page work is my greatest international scholarly contribution to Journalism and Human Rights Activism. It investigates the relationship between Nigerian military governments and the Nigerian press in the context of press freedom over a period of 23 years. The largely historical-legal study focuses on four objectives, which are to:examine the laws (decrees and edicts) which defined the limits of press freedom during military rule in Nigeria; draw together in one document the pertinent Nigerian case law in the area of press freedom during military rule;identify and analyse the institutional, legal and non-legal measures and mechanisms utilised by Nigerian military regimes in controlling the press; and identify and analyse the socio-political factors that influenced or affected press freedom during military rule.The five regimes studied are Aguiyi-Ironsi, Yakubu Gowon, Murtala-Obasanjo, Buhari, and Ibrahim Babangida dictatorships.The study establishes the following:In spite of the firm promises to duly respect the freedom of the Nigerian press made at inception by four of the five Nigerian military governments (the exception being the Buhari regime), all the governments excluding the short-lived Ironsi regime enacted numerous repressive press laws and general legislations which seriously hampered the freedom of the Nigerian press.A preponderant majority of these laws were at variance with the established liberal or libertarian principles of press freedom which constitutionally enjoin the Nigerian press to monitor governance.The circumstances of the promulgation of many of the laws showed, in no uncertain terms, that the military governments were not only irascibly sensitive to press criticisms, they were also intrinsically intolerant of press freedom.In addition to the very many anti-press freedom laws which the military governments enacted, they also utilised other sundry administrative weapons to control the press. These weapons include: harassment of and assaults on journalists and news media managers, undue suspension and dismissal of journalists working in government-owned news media, banning of journalists from government house beats, prohibition of government-sponsored advertisements in the critical private press, use of newsprint to strangle critical newspapers, overt censorship, establishment of government newspapers forceful take-over of established private newspapers, insertion of ghost-written articles in government-owned newspapers, police-raids on news media, buying over of journalists, deportation of foreign journalists, seizure of publications and peremptory closures of the news media.In accord with Siebert’s Proposition II (1952:10) which postulates that “the area of freedom contracts and the enforcement of restraint increases as the stresses on the stability of the government and of the structure of society increase, the studied military governments repressed the press more during crises periods than at peaceful times.The degree of freedom that was granted the press during military rule in Nigeria varied from regime to regime. Judging by the regularity, prodigy and ferocity of the assaults visited on the press by the Babangida regime, in contradistinction with the situation under the remaining four regimes, the vital social institution can be said to have enjoyed the lowest degree of freedom under the Babangida regime. The Buhari regime can be said to be second to the Babangida regime in press freedom repression. One fundamental difference between the Buhari and the Babangida regimes is that in spite of the dracontic atmosphere of the Buhari era, journalists knew what was an offence. Most of the time during the seemingly more congenial atmosphere of the Babangida government, the demarcating line between permissible and offensive publication was not only blurred, it also shifted with the government’s whims. Both the Gowon and Mohammed Obasanjo governments can be said to occupy the third position regarding the extent of press freedom that operated under the five military regimes while the Ironsi Junta was the least suppressive of the freedom of the Nigerian press. This, perhaps, is partly because of the shot duration of its rule.   The study draws the following conclusions, based on its findings:No matter how liberally one defines the concept of press freedom, the freedom of the Nigerian press was not duly respected by any of the five Nigerian military governments investigated.Negative as it was, the repression of the freedom of the Nigerian press by the various Nigerian military governments is hardly surprising. It bears out Siebert’s (1952) postulation that the degree of press freedom operating in any society “depends on the nature of the relationship of the government to those subject to the government”. Military dictatorships, which mostly relate with subjects on the medieval “might is right” syndrome, upholding the capricious fancies of their leading officers holding transient positions of power while trampling on citizens’ rights, are not generally known to uphold or defend citizens’ freedoms in governance.Despite the inhuman laws and other harsh control measures of the military era, the Nigerian press was undaunted and its performance during the period was impressive. The traditional courage and resilience of the Nigerian press, particularly the courage and resilience of its much harassed, much victimised and much brutalised private genre, largely accounts for this commendable performance.While the study does not pray for military rule again in Nigeria, it notes that, in spite of the global clamour for democratisation of governance, the legal status of military regimes in the comity of nations remains unaltered, as customary international law still recognises coup d’etat as a proper and effective means of changing a government. (Omodunbi, 1978; Achike, 1978:113). As expounded by Kelsen (cf. Achike, 1978:112-113): A national legal order begins to be valid as soon as it has become on the whole-efficacious. The government brought into permanent power by a revolution or coup-d’etat is, according to international law, the legitimate government of the state.It posits that notwithstanding that Section 1 (2) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution outlaws military governments, this is no absolute guarantee that military government can no longer surface in the country. It, therefore, recommends that in the event of any such scenario, such a government must, in line with customary international law which obliges all governments, including military regimes, to respect the rights and freedoms of their subjects, rule in accordance with the due process of law. Should it fail or refuse to duly respect the freedom of the press, the Nigerian press, in collaboration with the Nigerian people, should, at all costs, strive to preserve its freedom, as it has always creditably done during military rule.It emphasises that there is no viable alternative to this reasonable course, for once any government, military or civilian, largely succeeds in repressing the freedom of the press, it is bye-bye to all other freedoms of the people, which is the rationale behind (John Peter) Zenger’s postulation that “no nation, ancient or modern, ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing or publishing their sentiments but forthwith lose their liberty in general and become slaves”.The research for this international publication, with a strong nexus with Journalism and Human Rights Activism, was funded by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA). It was published by the multi-country based international scholarly publisher, The Edwin Mellen Press, which distributes its research publications to universities and research libraries throughout the world. For The Edwin Mellen Press to accept any scholarly work for publishing, three eminent scholars in the country of origin of the work, and in the field of its subject, must review the work and find it commendably publishable. After the three positive recommendations, The Edwin Mellen Press would then give the work to its own internationally renowned assessor in the field. It is based on the latter’s blind assessment that the work would either be accepted for publishing or rejected. Two of my greatly respected teachers and authorities in Journalism and Mass Communication, the Late Professor A. Babatunde Folarin of the University of Ibadan and the living Professor Idowu Sobowale, then of Lagos State University, and my late senior colleague and famous Journalism and Mass Communication guru, Professor Lai Oso, assessed the manuscript of the work nationally with accolades for the author and its contents. The Edwin Mellen Press was hugely, superlatively thrilled by the blind review of its own international assessor that it was constrained to send a copy of the assessment, which I even needed not to see, to me. I quote a few declarations and avowals from the assessment:… The author provides a masterpiece interpretation and analysis of the interplay of political power, sociological cross-currents, and human interactions in a dynamic country which has a prolific and virile press.… The author has meticulously delineated the areas of coverage, and has done a fine job of analysis and synthesis. The contents of the chapters are relevant to the titles. By reading this work, one can sense that the author has done a worthy amount of research. Moreover, he has taken the pains to make his declarations and arguments lucid and persuasive. As a student of Nigerian government/press relations over the years, I feel privileged to read the authoritative interpretations of military/press relations in Nigeria provided by the author in this work.… I believe that the author’s stated intent to bridge the gap in understanding the relationship between the Nigerian military governments and the Nigerian press was achieved. Oloyede is a highly disciplined and dexterous writer. He has researched twenty-seven years of complex historical, sociological, political and judicial occurrences and made them understandable. His arguments and analyses are profusely supported by documented sources.This book is a must for anyone who intends to study or understand Nigerian history, law, culture, economics, government and communications.

 I recommend it as a necessary addition to the shelves of students and researchers of Nigerian affairs.Apart from enjoying rare reviews all over the world, the book received two awards, one from Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Nigeria and the other from the Alumni Association of Moshood Abiola Polytechnic (MAPALUM), where I first started lecturing Journalism and Mass Communication and spent 25 years, and where I was domicile while researching and writing all the publications related to Human Rights Activism.

In deep appreciation of the book, the Nasarawa State University invited me in 2006, from the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, to the Second International Conference on “Africa’s Indigenous Science and Knowledge System”, organised by its Department of History, hosted me for four days, gave me a plague and offered me a Senior-Lectureship position into its Department of Mass Communication without applying or interviewing for the job, for what it calls “a master-piece analysis of the Nigerian press under military dictatorships” encapsulated in an international book of that title. The Moshood Abiola Polytechnic Alumni Association (MAPALUM) honored me for my “contribution to intellectual and academic development and for placing the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic on the World Map”.My Teaching, Pedagogy and Curriculum DevelopmentIn my 42 years as a teacher and academic (from 1982 to date), I have contributed to teaching and pedagogy in nine higher institutions. I have shared English Language and Literature knowledge with students in two secondary schools and Journalism and Mass Communication pedagogy in one monotechnic, (the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ), Ibadan Campus. one polytechnic (the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta), and seven universities. The universities are the Redeemer’s University (RUN), Ajayi Crowther University (ACU), Elizade University (EU), Afe Babalola University (ABUAD), Adeleke University (AU), Lead City University (LCU) and Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU). With a PhD in Mass Communication, before joining Redeemer’s University 16 years ago, I have taught in many universities, even as a Senior Lecturer at Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta. I have also contributed to Journalism and Mass Communication curriculum development and review in many universities, including Redeemer’s University and Chrisland University, Abeokuta. Moreover, I am one of the ten Journalism and Mass Communication experts nationally appointed by the National Universities Commission (NUC) to put together the Communication and Media Studies Curriculum of the recently introduced Core Curriculum and Minimum Academic Standards for the Nigerian University System (CCMAS), and one of the two to review the Journalism and Media Studies Curriculum, the other being the Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University, Kashere, Gombe State, Professor Umaru Pate.My Community Service Before moving into mainstream community service, I must highlight my service to my immediate community, my university, the Redeemer’s University. In addition to my teaching, research and publishing responsibilities in the last 16 years, I have provided leadership for my department (Mass Communication) for cumulatively seven years, the Directorate of General Studies Programme (DGSP) of the university for one year, and my faculties, (first, the Faculty of Management and Social Sciences and, second, the Faculty of Social Sciences) for five years. I have headed the Management Board of the Directorate of Educational Services and Training (DEST) of the University for three years. In addition to other special and impromptu duties, I have served in over 50 statutory and adhoc Faculty, University and University Senate Committees, chairing many. I have not just served my university in the outlined capacities, I have diligently, meritoriously, done so with numerous accolades. I have received from my university, the Redeemer’s University, at least 12 letters of appreciation, immense appreciation, appreciation for onerous contributions, commendation, congratulations, special recognition and special awards from the university! I can never forget the superlative complimentary remark of one of my former personable and thorough Deans, Prof. Olumakinde Odugbemi, about me. After I creditably presented the report of an assignment he gave to a committee, composed of Heads of Departments under him, of which he made me the Chairman, at a meeting of the committee with him, Professor Odugbemi looked at all of us in the eyes and publicly declared: “Yes, Oloyede is a staff you can give an assignment and go to sleep.”My community service can be categorised into at least five major spheres: service to the Nigerian university system, service to a relevant professional body, service to other international and national educational and cultural organisations, participation in human rights organisations/associations and writing of human rights articles in national newspapers.Service to the Nigerian University SystemAfter turning down the External Examinership/Assessorship offers of some universities, for logistic and security reasons, I have served 40 universities, across the length and breadth of Nigeria, as External Examiner/Assessor. These universities, pleasingly, include my two alma maters, the University of Lagos and the University of Ibadan. My service cuts across undergraduate Bachelor’s programmes, Master’s dissertations, doctoral theses and professorial assessments. I have examined 22 undergraduate Bachelor’s Mass Communication programmes and assessed 70 Master’s dissertations, 32 PhD theses, and 43 professorial candidates in 40 different universities.I hardly serve any university once! The universities keep calling once I do the very first assignments for them. Why? One factor is the grace of the Almighty God. A second major element is that, in line with the Biblical injunction contained in Ecclesiastes 9:10, that “whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” [do it well], I do their works diligently well, just as I do my internal assignments. The very first university to appoint me an External Examiner, the Babcock University, Ilishan Remo, confirmed this, as all the other universities have also done.As an Associate Professor in 2012, Babcock University requested me to help it assess a doctoral thesis in Mass Communication. The university’s current Vice-Chancellor, the very personable Prof. Ademola Stephen Tayo, was, then, the university’s Dean of Postgraduate Studies. By the time, I was rounding off the examination of the doctoral candidate, Prof. Tayo had a formal letter of profuse gratitude, on behalf of Babcock University, ready for me! Hugely impressed by my superlative contributions to the improvement of the standard of the thesis and the university’s thesis examination process, Prof. Tayo wrote: “On behalf of Babcock University, School of Postgraduate Studies, I wish to express my profound appreciation to you for the professional and excellent manner in which you discharged the duty we assigned to you …”  I pleasurably report that with the special grace of the good Lord, this has been the pattern with all the other 39 universities that I have also served as External Examiner/Assessor. I have never conducted any external examination at which the respective university authorities would not commend me, and the examined candidate would not thank me for, what they usually call “learning so much from you.”In addition to serving as External Examiner/Assessor to these universities, I also serve as Assessor/Reviewer to some of their academic journals. Among others, I am on the Advisory Board of Babcock Journal of Mass Communication and Mountain Top University Journal of Humanities, Management and Social Sciences.The second leg of my service to the Nigerian university system is my contributions to the National Universities Commission (NUC), the agency for the regulation of higher, especially university, education in Nigeria. Besides being a Resource Person to the NUC on Journalism, Communication, Mass Communication and Media Studies curricular development and review, I have assisted the agency in the resource verification of Bachelor’s and Postgraduate Communication programmes in ten universities. I have equally helped it in the accreditation of Bachelor’s programmes in other 19 universities across Nigeria, making a total of 29 universities.  I have also served the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) and the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNMA) as a Resource Person.As a Consultant to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on Media and Information Literacy (MIL), I assisted UNESCO in establishing the imperative of Media and Information Literacy (MIL). Policy for Nigeria and in developing a framework for it. I am a member of the Governing Council of the Egba Science Education Foundation (ESEF), an eminent organisation for the promotion of science education in Egbaland and Ogun State. The Council invited me into its fold in 2005. Three years after, in 2008, it specially appreciated me “for services rendered “to the Foundation.”My Participation in Human Rights OrganisationsPrepared by my early liberal nurturing and formal education, both of which had tutored me to appreciate fairness, justice, egalitarianism and other human rights, and propelled and fired up by my journalism education, by the time I was leaving the Journalism School as a Bachelor’s degree holder in 1983, I had become grossly dissatisfied with the repression of human rights, especially the right to free expression and free press. With the return of military rule on 31st December, 1983, the repression of these rights became escalated. In line with Edmund Burke’s position that evil can only triumph where good men decide to do nothing, I decided to join the good people canvassing respect for fundamental human rights. By the time I completed the manuscript of Dismantling the Culture of Silence … in 1988, I was already a member of three active and resilient human rights groups, the Amnesty International (AI), the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) and the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR). I also, later on, joined the fourth, Article 19.  By 1991, I briefly headed Amnesty International Nigeria, Group 13 - Abeokuta. When, in November 1991, the Campaign for Democracy, first led by Dr Beko Ransome Kuti, was founded, I also became a member, travelling, from Abeokuta, to Lagos, at times, to hold nocturnal meetings at Dr Beko Ransome Kuti’s house. At the height of the deadly Abacha dictatorship, my house in Abeokuta was the distribution-point for the regularly produced Campaign for Democracy leaflets for Abeokuta and environs. Throughout the June 12 struggle, I remained in touch with Prof. Wole Soyinka before Abacha’s threat on his life forced him to flee into exile.  Of course, Human Rights Activism, especially during brutal, despotic military rule, is never a tea-party. Activists were routinely harassed and imprisoned. They could also be killed or made to disappear. In all these activities, I enjoyed the full support and encouragement of my then young, but very courageous wife, my peerless jewel, Gbeminiyi Tolani Oloyede, who did not even feel I was doing anything dangerous. Many human rights activists, like me, remain unsung heroes of the June 12 struggle!As part of my community service, I also wrote a few articles, published in national newspapers, in defence of freedom of expression and the press and challenging the actions and views of Nigerian military governments that negate fundamental human rights. One of them, written during my National Youth Service in 1984, and published in the Nigerian Tribune, addressed Major General Mohammadu Buhari and his military regime’s promulgation of the draconic Decree 4 of 1984. It was titled “Who Is After the Press? Another, published by The Guardian in 1990, challenged the wrongful analysis of the cause(s) of students’ unrests in Nigeria, by Vice-Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, the Chief of General Staff and second in command to General Babangida.Teaching and writing to educate students and the general public about their fundamental rights, apropos of freedom of expression and freedom of the press, is also a part of Human Rights Activism. 

This inaugural lecture also is.Recommendations Given the overriding fundamentality, the peerless-importance and the primus inter pares nature of freedom of communication, and in accord with the charge of the United Nations (UN), I strongly advocate that every individual and every organ of society, including groups and government, should always claim, exercise, enforce and defend the foremost rights of freedom of expression and freedom of the press.

 They should not sleep over these rights. They should exercise them maximally. In their relationship with others, they should always adopt Voltaire’s rightful policy of “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. Two, governments, the world over, especially, must appreciate, respect and defend the rights of free expression and free press, as a large proportion of the repression on these fundamental rights comes from governments. In 1920, scared by the enormous powers of the press, the Russian politician and philosopher, Nikolai Lenin, asked in a speech in Moscow:Why should freedom of speech and freedom of the press be allowed? Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. Ideas are much more fatal things than guns. Why should any man be allowed to buy a printing press and disseminate pernicious opinions calculated to embarrass the government?Of course, this kind of perception or position is antithetical to modern governance. It is also contrary to the fundamental human rights of freedom of expression and the press enshrined in Article 19 and all other continental ad national laws.Moreover, everyone in society, individuals and governments, must understand, appreciate and accommodate dissent and criticism. Intolerance of dissent and criticism constitutes major yardsticks for repression of free expression and free press. Human history establishes that all human progress has resulted from unpopular stands. It shows and proves to a philistine, anti-intellectual world that humanity owes almost all her knowledge to those who have disagreed with popular or extant ideas, not to those who have agreed!As enunciated by Nyeyere:The basis of human progress throughout history has been the existence of people, who regardless of the consequences to themselves, stood up when they believed it necessary and said “that is wrong, this is what we should do”.Four, individuals and governments should understand and appreciate the role of freedom of expression and the liberty of the press as safety values for peace and peaceful change in society. The reason usually given by individuals and governments for the repression of free expression and free press is the probable disruption of the social order or the bringing down of institutions and governments. For peace to thrive in any society, the remedy for objectionable ideas must be counter arguments. The discontented must be allowed to talk in order to know the cause(s) of their discontent and take steps to end those causes. Again, Justice Hughes underlines this in the American case of Dejonge v. Oregon when he submitted:The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsible to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means.One of the major mistakes individuals and governments who repress free expression and free press usually make is to believe that the ideas they are trying to suppress have died. Repressed ideas do not die, they continue to circulate, even more widely and wildly, in secret, many times with greater negative consequences. As Borah has long educated the world:Agitation is the lifeblood of free institutions. Some look upon it as the source of revolution. It is its most certain preventive…. When you drive men from the public arena where debate is free, you send them to the cellar where revolutions are born. Better an uproar than a whisper. (Borah, 1925)ConclusionThis inaugural lecture is a tribute to all individuals and journalists whose rights to free expression and free press have, at one time or the other being repressed or violated. It is an acknowledgement to those who have been harassed, molested, illegally detained, or, like the Dele Giwas of this world, have been killed or caused to disappear on the basis of the due exercise of their rights of free expression and the press. It is also an eye opener and an encouragement to every global citizen to maximally exercise and defend all fundamental human rights and, especially, the foremost rights of free expression and free press. Moreover, it is a timely advice to the Nigerian security agencies and, inferentially, the Nigerian governments at all levels, to follow the law in their mode of arresting and prosecuting journalists suspected of infringing on Nigeria’s publishing laws. Information and evidences available in the public domain are to the effect that instead of politely inviting this set of people for interrogation, our law enforcement agencies lay a siege for, ambush and sometimes, arrest them in a kidnapping manner.This, definitely, is not in tandem with the rule of law, which dictates that suspected offenders be presumed innocent until proven guilty.  One of the three elements of the doctrine of the rule of law identified by Dicey is that it is “a law which hears before it condemns, which proceeds upon inquiry and renders judgement only after trial.”There is, therefore, no room for suspects’ ambushing or kidnapping in our laws. In line with Sir John Latham’s solid notion, “it is not our law that what is done officially is law; our law is that what is done officially must be done in accordance with law.” With respect to ‘unwanted publications’ by journalists and citizens, Nigerian governments, federal and states, are sincerely advised to adopt Chafee’s three-pronged recommendations for maintaining the delicate balance between freedom of expression and state or personal interests. Chafee advocates thus:A wise and salutary neglect of talk, coupled with vigorous measures against plans for actual violence and a general endeavour to end discontent is the best legal policy towards anarchy (cf Haiman, 1978)

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