By Tony Erha
Nigeria is a strange place. And most Nigerians are unbearable. So also are some countries of the world and their natives. But my focus is Nigeria, my country. It flows with a saying by the Edo people of Nigeria; “Egen omwan ere agwa yi”; The hoe heaps next to a man’s legs so long it’s about food that sustains life. But coming to digging the soak-away the sand is thrown sideways. Another one by the same Edo goes; “Owa ighi ma omwan, aighi kporun vb’ ugbo”. When it isn’t well with one’s home front, he shouldn’t call out loudly to the outsiders on the vast farmland.
In Nigeria, the country you and I call our own, charity begins from abroad, instead of home. It’s comical relief to be called a Nigerian. In a domain, where many persons have light fingers, everybody can’t be a thief. And when thieves are many, the dishonour is that ‘a family is altogether called a thief. Nigerians like much of theatrics – deeds that are nonsensical and exaggerated out of proportion. But a comedy isn’t worth the salt, when it is short of substance and suspense. That is why the critical minds hardly cherish Nigeria’s Nollywood dramas, because of supple certainty and emptiness.
It, therefore, relates to the odd when most Nigerians are careless of the massive problems affecting their own country, and instead give rapt attentions to happenings in other spheres. Currently, Nigerians after addiction to the fatalities of the war and taking position are again engrossed by a ceasefire in the war between Israel-America and Iran. To the mega question, what is there for Nigerians in external squabbles that concern them, in a distant war, when back home, they abandon the unending insurgency and huge death tolls, economic hardship, unbridled corruption and sloppy political leadership that confront the country?
A concerned Reuben Abati, an ace broadcaster of Arise Television’s talk-show, is an exemption from the media constituency, which is oftentimes condemned as playing the ostrich. He simply justified his query about a citizenry fixation to such external happenings that jeopardise the public peace in the country.
Albert Camus, in “The Myth of Sisyphus”, a delicate and probing article that leans on the “Theatre of the Absurd”, once admitted that the human condition is in effect, more ‘unreasonable’ and incomplete of common purpose.
And the Nigerian mass media is mostly accused of siding the societal high-class and the neo-colonialists, which induce gullible public-deeds that snowball abuse of power (a failed Nigeria-ness) and human foibles. Ordinarily, it’s the mass media, the elite and the external traitors that make or mar a society.
“Our barbarians come from above”. Henry D. Lloyd, American journalist, confesses to the perilous deeds of the upper class, since the era of the American ‘Old West’ or the ‘Victorian’ of the British.
Before it lost the monopoly, due to the advent of the over-dominance social media, the traditional media – television, hardcopy newspapers and the radio, often at the beck and call by state and biased-powerful individuals, that bankroll them, had had a field day of public misuse. Now, the traditional media faces low patronage – fewer advertisement earnings and subscriptions, where they go cap-in-hand, to sustain the once almighty newspapers that dominated the newsstands, and the ubiquitous hooting street vendors.
I will recall a verse of my previous treatise, that every Adamu, Okonkwo and Dele (in the nuances of Nigeria), has become a journalist or reporter of the sort, because he has access to internet-compliant desktop, laptop, table and smart phone, and so could manipulate Artificial Intelligence (AI) gimmickry or access it, and share to others.
It is in this realm that I pity numerous of my country men, who worked themselves up on mere Artificial Intelligence (AI) creations, that Israel-America were winning the war, vice versa. It is the same AI concoctions that caused so much hullabaloo and animosity between regional, religious and political opposites.
With modesty, I am one of the very few journalists to be computer and internet-literate, and had belonged to the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS), a pioneer global informatics coalition, in which I served in its Human Rights Caucus. I had severally made premonitions in some of our past global forums, that ‘process journalism’ and ‘citizenry reporting’ (social media), that have unhindered access to internet and its browsing components, were going to clash permanently, and put the world asunder.
Long before then, the late Chief Anthony Enahoro, one of the doyens of Nigerian journalism, once told me, intently and I recorded him for posterity; “Journalism has come with a sharp knife that cuts the ‘block’ of Nigeria, and it would stop at nothing, but should do better to unveil and crash the heresies of a balkanized society that feigns unity, and exploit the people’s witlessness. Ignorance must be eradicated by mass education and objective journalism”. Chief Enahoro was a visionary mentor, who professed to what the traditional media had signified (and signifies).
Indeed, the social media is a catalyst, but diseased, as it is a detractor. It dishonestly plays the poker with a man’s mental equilibrium. Why is a man so engulfed and unconscious of himself, so much so that he laughs it off until he hits a moving car, for instance? Why does he laughs and punches the air, like a mad man chasing nothing?
I had thought I was the only one left puzzled, until the Nigerian president, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, (a.k.a. Jagaban), as ‘unfazed’ as he is said to be, once voiced it out that he too is afraid-stiffed of the social media. Poor guy! He confessed to having ‘pounding heartbeats’ when he read about himself in the social media, to the effect that he stopped accessing it.
Most Nigerian social media influencer are so wicked, doing more of the social media contents to increase the president’s pains, whether he reads or not. Their judgement is that where the president avoids the social media, his numerous aides should receive the same ‘punishment’ on his behalf.
An average Esan person from Edo State, Nigeria is resolute that; “Ulinlin i-sabo gbe ehelen, ramude eke ede ole ada biole”. “Minor cold can’t kill the fish, because it was originally born in the cold water of the river”. Much as this enforced my tenacity to dismiss the same social media threats, I had had the misfortune of getting the President Tinubu’s treatment. Of the WhatsApp, FaceBook and other social media group platforms that I belonged I had incurred many enemies from friends, simply because I spoke my mind on burning issues.
In a particular memorable incident, a-96-years-old mother-in-law had told me, pointblank, that I was an unrepentant liar. My offence was my insistence that the fight between a farmer and his yam-tuber, that she watched on internet tablet, given her by our confused grandchild, was nothing else but a make-believe animation by AI.
I am not alone in my “satanic verses”, on the social media (with a plea to Salma Rushdie, who nearly lived his surname “Rushed-to-die” by a ‘fatwa’ by the head-hunters). Herein, Matt Goulart, a Canadian digital expert and essayist, comes to my rescue; “The Social Media is about the people. Not about your business. Provide for the people and the people will provide for you”
Jay Baer, a New York Times bestselling author and motivational speaker, also validated that; “Social media content is fire. Social Media is gasoline”.
“These things (AI) could get more intelligent than us and could decide to take over, and we need to worry now about how we prevent that happening”. Asserted Geoffrey Hinton, the man known as the “Godfather of AI”, for his pioneering the subject. Suffice, that in 2023, Hinton resigned his position as vice-president and engineering fellow at Google, so that he could go campaigning on the dangers of AI.
For a world that is still euphoric by the AI craves, who knows if the ‘regrets of a life work’ by an inventive Hinton, wouldn’t turn the way of Alfred Noble, whose later life’s regrets were the invention of the dynamites and other explosives, although had influenced industrial revolution, soon turned the greatest tools for war and substantial human and property destructions.