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| BOOK REVIEW |
| Reuben Abati | Tuesday, March 27, 2007 |
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Lagos, Nigeria 
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A GUERILLA JOURNALIST WRITES BACK
his is an important book. In it, Sunday Dare, a Nigerian journalist - former General Editor of The News, now the Chief of the VOA Hausa Service and a tested hand in his chosen trade tells the story of one of the remarkable but sad moments in Nigerian history: the transition from military rule to civilian rule in the 90s and the role of the press, and indeed the significance of the civil society, as a tool and platform for articulating the people's aspirations and choices in the face of repression and dispossession. Critical turning points in national history tend to produce useful literature: Sunday Dare's Guerilla Journalism: Dispatches from the Underground is a welcome addition to the growing bibliography on Nigeria's "years of locust" (1993 - 1998) when the military held Nigeria in a vice-like grip and eroded the country's claims to high values. The catalyst for the Guerilla Journalism that Dare describes is the annulment of the Presidential election of June 12, 1993, and the ambush tactics of the ruling military elite in Nigeria.
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Sunday Dare's contribution is not an academic interrogation of the subject, and so there is no attempt at a comprehensive analysis of a phenomenon that involved so many media houses and other personalities, but in terms of the narrow focus that the author chooses, he offers a detailed, absolutely interesting account delivered in seamless and enchanting prose. This is essentially the work of a reporter and a keen student of history with a talent for details. Guerilla Journalism: Dispatches from the Underground is first autobiographical: Sunday Dare tells the personal story of his involvement, the trials he faced, the paradoxes that he had to deal with, his near-brushes with danger, the friends and colleagues that died, the sacrifices that he and his friends and employers had to make, his journalism, his flight into exile, his return, and his reflections as a citizen of the environment known as Nigeria; this is also a book about journalism: its place in society; its value and heritage in Nigerian history; its potency as a revolutionary tool; and in specific terms, the response of the Nigerian intelligentsia and the pro-democracy movement to the attempts by the military to frustrate the country's transition to civilian rule.
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The departure point for all these is Dare's narration of the resort to Guerilla Journalism as one of the many options adopted by civil society as a means of defying and sabotaging the military rulers who took over the Nigerian space between 1985 and 1998. He tells the story of Independent Communications Network Limited (ICNL), publishers of The News, AM News, Tempo, Tempo Football and PM News and without any fear of contradiction, this is to date the most detailed biography of this media house which played a frontline role in the making of the Nigerian state in the 90s, and the eventual transition to democratic rule. In Kunle Ajibade's Jailed for Life, and contributions to other publications by Bayo Onanuga, Dapo Olorunyomi and Akin Adesokan, the story of ICNL and its publications has been told in bits and pieces in parenthesis, but here, Sunday Dare offers a more extensive account, he pays tribute to the heroism of the many players in the story, and perhaps for the first time, the role of the support staff, the back room team, gate men, messengers, and production team in the media house is highlighted. These figures in the newspaper production process are not known by their by-lines, but they are no less significant: Dare demonstrates how they could be inspired to express much heroism in the face of terror.
Thus, Guerilla Journalism is a long tribute to the staff of The News, the more generic name for the media house, a tribute to its founders, and a tribute to its supporters, notably Senator Bola Tinubu, now the Governor of Lagos State, who provided much needed support when the media house faced so much difficulty: unable to pay its staff, hounded by the military and threatened by certain collapse. Dare's perspective is that of a loyal staff, of a team player and a grateful student of history and circumstances, but this is no hagiography, in examining the subject of Guerilla Journalism, as practised by the News group, he admits that the ideology of partisan objectivity that was adopted was not without the risk of excesses and the necessary subversion of such ethics of journalism that would be considered sacred in normal times by the mainstream press.
The beauty of this book is in the narrative. Between 1983 and 1999, the military had captured the reins of power in Nigeria, imposing on the people a long season of darkness, marked by human rights abuses and violations of the rule of law. In 1993, an electoral process that was adjudged free and fair by both local and international observers was aborted for no clearer reason than the power-drunkeness of the military elite.The people's voice was muzzled, the entire environment became a closed, compressionistic arena with .grave implications for the people and social institutions. During this period, the more brutal regimes were the ones led by General Muhammadu Buhari (1983 -1985), General Ibrahim Babangida (1985 -1993) and General Sani Abacha (1993 - 1998). These governments not only hated the press, they made human freedoms impossible. The media which resisted their excesses was a special target, and in this book, Sunday Dare offers a detailed and often humorous account of the tactics that were adopted by the military establishment to frustrate any form of criticism, scrutiny by the media or any alternative opinion at all.
In one instance in Jos, Dare had to climb the roof of a building to avoid detection by military agents who were waiting to arrest him; on another occasion in Geshua, he narrates how he narrowly escaped being arrested, his cover having been blown by an agent of the state, other methods adopted by the state included the proscription of media houses, arrests and detentions, within a short period, Babafemi Ojudu for example was detained 14 times by the Abacha government, imposition of death sentences on journalists, jail terms, harassment of families of journalists as in the example of Dapo Olorunyomi's wife and children, and in one word, the existence of an adversarial relationship between the media and the ruling junta.
In the face of this tyranny, Sunday Dare tells the story of the emergence of the .phenomenon of Guerilla Journalism. Three things must be noted in this regard. The first is his description of the background to the adoption of underground journalism by The News team, the media house which had emerged as a result of the refusal of its founding team to apologise to the Babangida regime, on account of a story which they had published as staff of The National Concord. Thus from its very beginning, The News set out on an adversarial note, and the Nigerian state wasted no time in seeking to contain the rebellion of its angry team of editors and reporters. The parts of this book dealing with The News magazine and its other allied publications offer useful comments on newspaper management and particularly, how a young team can be motivated to pursue a nationalistic dream. Many members of The News family made great sacrifices and Sunday Dare pays close attention to all of this.
A second aspect of the narration that is just as instructive is the very nature of guerilla journalism itself: the methods and strategies that were adopted by the News family, including the introduction of new publications, constant movement by reporters, the use of disguise, the decentralisation of operations, counter surveillance of state security, but by far the most remarkable weapon was the resilience of Dare and his colleagues; their courage in the presence of fire: some of the episodes that are narrated here are simply mind-blowing. But Dare does not tell it all: he gives the impression that there are aspects of the media revolution of the time that must not be revealed because the struggle for the soul and future of Nigeria is not yet over; the methods of old may well prove useful again. And in this regard, he is absolutely right.
The third notable aspect of this book is the tribute that Sunday Dare pays to his former bosses, his colleagues and all other collaborators in the revolt against military rule. The founders of The News: Bayo Onanuga, Idowu Obasa, Dapo Olorunyomi, Seye Kehinde, Kunle Ajibade, Babafemi Ojudu, and Sani Kabir feature prominently in this narration; he profiles each and everyone of them, their role not just in the making of a media house but their commitment as patriots who sought change and as journalists for whom the job is a radical mission. Dare cannot be accused of being too kind to his bosses: their individual stories are well-known, but here a far more intimate and objective analysis is offered.
This is also a book about The News reportorial corps and family, the soldiers of fate who used their pens and positions to rebel against tyranny. Even when they were told by Bayo Onanuga that the fight will be rough, they threw their hats, men and women into the ring, there is so much heroism here, so much display of commitment on the part of Gbile Oshadipe, who had to lead the team after all the leaders had gone underground, each one of them with a death sentence on his head, Yinka Tella, Ike Okonta, Baguda Kaultho, Seidi Mulero who ferried editors across "the NADECO route" into neighbouring countries, Simidele Awosika, Grace Awodu, Muyiwa Adekeye, Akin Adesokan, Ayodele Arowolo, Ebenezer Obadare, Jenkins Alumona…
They were chased out of their offices, their salaries could not be paid, they had to live in a constant state of fear and anxiety, but they refused to give up; Dare also pays tribute to Professor Adebayo Williams and Professor Wole Soyinka, who in different ways, provided the intellectual inspiration for the revolution; Senator Bola Tinubu whose deep pockets and network of contacts sustained the process and the pro-democracy coalition - NADECO and Campaign for Democracy (CD). The only caveat here perhaps is Dare's obsession with Adebayo Williams, whom he introduces as the "godfather of Guerilla Journalism, " this is clearly a debatable claim, and whom he quotes one more time too frequently. But on the whole, Sunday Dare documents the journalism of The News at a special moment, not only in Nigerian history but in the life of the publication as well.
This book qualifies as a critique of military rule, but Sunday Dare argues that the Nigerian military lacked "a liberal ideological training". This is a point that the military elite themselves are quick to contest insisting as they often do, that every military intervention was a child of necessity and an ideological intervention in the making of the Nigerian state. The strong man theory in African politics is invariably an ideological choice, it was most sadly promoted in the 70s by the political science establishment as a liberal and necessary option for Africa's development process.
Dare has dealt with the side of the story as provided by The News family, he provides all the leads and states the issues - this in fact is the second book from The News stable on aspects of the subject under investigation - but for a fuller account of the story of Guerilla Journalism in Nigeria in the 90s, the periscope must cover the efforts of other publications particularly Tell magazine, and the crowd of smaller publications that emerged at the time including Razor, The Broom and Alaroye. Dare does not fall into the easy trap of assuming that the underground press did a lot more than the mainstream press in chasing the Nigerian military out of power, for indeed that task was of a much broader and collective nature. There are eleven chapters but they are tilted Pages: the word Chapter is preferable.
In the last Chapters, the author deals with Nigeria's return to civilian rule, and closes his narration with what he calls: "Nigeria's Mess, Obasanjo's Mayhem" (p. 143). Phrased as a question, he seems to be asking: what has democracy brought us? Of what value is the struggle, the pains and the sacrifices associated with the narration in preceding pages. Dare's verdict is that Nigeria's new rulers have failed the nation, not much has changed. And he is right. The key area of challenge is in the failure, since 1999, to transform Nigeria into an open society. There are many Nigerians, not just journalists who are still "underground", and the society is still marked by spectres of dispossession, the tone of the media remains prosecutorial, the relationship with the state is adversarial. In eight years, the Obasanjo government claims as one of its achievements, the expansion of the space for media expression and freedom but it is ironic that the same government is yet to endorse the Freedom of Information Bill whose intent is the negation of the very circumstances that made Guerilla Journalism inevitable. There are other issues that have been thrown up by Dare's contribution, including the irreducibility of human freedom.
He describes many of his former colleagues as "lanky"; some of these persons now pack so much fat around; others have moved out of journalism completely. Many of these former colleagues may also disagree with aspects of the narration, in terms of their roles and Dare's remembrance but no one can doubt the author's honesty of purpose. It should also be taken for granted that there are persons and sources whose names cannot be disclosed even after the event.
The News was driven by a policy of "partisan objectivity"; even for that publication, the times have changed, there are observers who may accuse The News today of a different kind of partisanship in the absence of a common enemy. This other subject however is beyond Sunday Dare's focus in Guerilla Journalism: Dispatches from the Underground. What he has done is more than enough: a lively and readable book, dealing with an important subject in an original and engaging manner.
