WHEN we discussed here and there what AriseTV’s Oseni Rufai was doing in the name of journalism(which was strangely slanted) we were riled by a turbulent minority. His style elicited an article from me in 2023: Rufai Oseni and the Journalism Profession, which was published in several newspapers including Premium Times Nigeria.
Today, Abati, with his unsubstantiated claim concerning land sales in the eastern part of Nigeria, has become a ragtag rebel by this same inconsistent minority. He is being pelted by those who urged them(Oseni and co) on to depart from the core essence of journalism to that diabetic partisanship.
Journalism has its ethics, some are not written but inherently perceived. Abati should have known that not everything that is known or experienced must be said, not everything that is right is also expedient. If your words in front of the camera as a journalist is going to spark ethnic burnfires and sentiments and emotions in a country that is about 250 subdivided into different ethnic groups, you do not need a prophet to tell you to forego such a retail. We can recall to mind what type of anger was inspired even outside the literary circle when Jose Saramago, the Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize winner, made a certain remark about genocide.
Abati did not need a seance to tell him the pent-up hatred between the Yorubas and the Ibos since the civil war cannot be ignored or wished away. What is expected of any journalist is to develop that attitude of dispatching his duty dispassionately – without emotions, without partiality and with utmost rationality.
