By; RAYMOND TEDUNJAYE, Lagos
Hon. Kayode Akinmade, is the Special Adviser on Media and Strategy to Ogun State Governor Prince Dapo Abiodun. With almost three decades as a practising journalist, he has also served as Special Adviser to a former Speaker of House of Representatives and worked as Commissioner for Information and Strategy. He shared his experience and suggestions on how to sanitise the media space of unprofessional practice with Raymond Tedunjaye.
Excerpt:
As a media guru with about three decades of practice and working in government, could you share your experience with us?
To start with, there’s a sharp distinction between practising as a journalist and serving in government. As a practising journalist, you are trained to process news that will be useful to your organisation. You go out every morning to look for stories, either you are assigned to a particular beat or on general beat, you write features, you write analysis and also trained to ask inquisitive and hot questions to make your interviewee uncomfortable, so that you can be able to get more information about the subject matter. But working in government is a different ball game, because when you work in government, you are like a public relations manager, a reputation builder and a reputation manager of the government or the agency you represent. Your duty and responsibility is to ensure that the government you represent is being viewed from a positive perspective, you must present stories, information that will positively project the image of your principal.
Be that as it may, I want to thank God for the special privilege he has given me to work as a journalist and also in different sectors of our political space. I have served as Special Adviser to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Dimeji Bankole, that’s at the legislative arm of government, I have also worked as Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Ondo State during Governor Olusegun Mimiko’s regime and am also privileged through the special grace of God to be serving now as Special Adviser to the Ogun State Governor Prince Dapo Abiodun on Media and Publicity.
Those three experiences are quite different ball games, because the experience I got while at the National Assembly, was quite different from the one I had in Ondo State and what I am experiencing now is not the same as others, but the only meeting line is that we process information for public consumption and we build reputation, but there are so many challenges within the space.
When you are reporting in the National Assembly, you are working with a Speaker who is just first among equal. What that means is that it is the privilege of his fellow colleagues that made him the Speaker and what that means is that if he looses that respect, he could be removed at any time and to remove a Speaker might not take more than twenty four or forty eight hours.
Therefore, there are more work to be done to ensure that you build reputation for your principal and ensure you monitor all the committees in the House of Representatives and also ensure that good information about the activities of the Speaker comes out everyday.
You must also be on your toes to ensure that members who are not happy with him being the Speaker do not come together to impeach him because a Speaker can be removed just because of frivolous allegation. So you must continue to do that and also build a good relationship with correspondents covering the National Assembly, so as to be able to give quality report about your principal.
At the State level, you have people working with you, you have the Ministry that you superintendent over, you have Permanent Secretary and some Directors that are directly working under you that are ready to assist you and ensure that you get the desired results. So it’s a different ball game all together, it has been a worthwhile experience and one has being able to learn a lot.
How could you compare and contrast the challenges of modern day practice of journalism and your practising days?
During our period, we write stories with long hand and also dictate stories, using the telephone, most especially for some of us who work outside the headquarters, then I worked with Tribune Newspaper and most of the time, we had to struggle with one another to get our stories across to our various offices. Then, we made use of fax machine to fax our stories. There are times when there would be electricity here, but not in your parent office and your stories will not get across and vice versa, it was very challenging. But now, you have the technology in place, with a press of button, you get your stories across. You can either record, type,send stories across and do all sort of things on one device. So technology has really helped modern day practice of journalism. Despite the challenges then, we show love and compassion for the job.
Then, you would be excited to be a journalist and then it was a military era. Everybody collectively came together to fight the military out of power and I thank God that we are also beneficiary of the democracy we fought and breed freedom in the air.
As a journalist who has experienced practising and serving in government, what is your take on government officials using security agencies to suppress journalists?
I thank God this trend you mentioned happened predominantly during the military era and I think it has gone to a large extent. As far as I know, in Ogun State, we don’t do that, we have not use the state security apparatus to either molest, harass or intimidate journalists. We believe that journalists have a role to play, to create order and stability in the society, we believe that journalists must be giving opportunity to practice their profession the way it’s supposed to be, because they are being referred to as the fourth estate of the realm. The constitution acknowledges that and also gives them the recognition because they must be able to hold government accountable for their actions to the people. However, it’s not a good thing in a democratic setting for any government to be using the State apparatus to molest and intimidate journalists.
It’s also important that our colleagues are also able to conduct themselves in a responsible and orderly matter according to the ethics of the profession. In the last few years, we’ve experienced upsurge of fake news, as reporters conjoined or manipulate stories to attack particular interest. This is unprofessional and unethical. What I would advise victims of such fake news is for them to take the appropriate steps stipulated by law to seek redress.
What danger do you think is inherent in the new media compare to the conventional media?
I think the evolution that’s taking place in the media space is a welcome development because information now travels just within a twinkle of an eye, once you process information, it resonates immediately across the world. But the missing link is professionalism. The fact remains that most of them in the new media are not trained journalists, they’re emergency journalists, they don’t have the rudiments. If you study journalism, you will be acquainted with the ethics of journalism and media law, acquainted with the knowledge that will guide you in your write-up to run away from libel, issues that can cause disrepute to your name, reputation and the medium you represent.
What I will advise is that the Nigeria Union of Journalists, the Guild of Editors and the Newspapers Proprietors Association should find a way of sanitising the profession because it will enhance our credibility.
How has it been managing the image of the Ogun State Governor Prince Dapo Abiodun?
Well, I can say managing Prince Dapo Abiodun has been very exciting, very rewarding and very fulfilling. Exciting because, one I have a governor who is a listening governor, I have a governor that is media friendly, I have a governor who’s very pragmatic, who’s intelligent, I have a governor who listen to other people’s views and opinion. We argue, we interract and he takes the best advice given to him. So, it has been exciting and rewarding working with a personality like Prince Dapo Abiodun and I pray that the almighty God will continue to be with him and make him to finish well.
There seems to be a healthy rivalry between Lagos and Ogun on infrastructural development and industrial evolution. Do you see Ogun State equating Lagos in this regard?
Those insinuating that are not correct, because Lagos is Lagos, while Ogun State is Ogun State, there’s is no rivary at all. The two states have their history. Lagos was the former capital territory of Nigeria and Ogun State is one of the states of the federation. Lagos as a former capital territory has the privilege of some infrastructural development done by the Federal Government and what Ogun State is privileged to have now is the fact that it is the gateway state. Anybody leaving Lagos must definitely pass through Ogun State either by land, sea or the air. So, what Ogun State is doing now is that we are trying to take advantage of our proximity to Lagos as the economic and financial hub of Nigeria. At least, we should be able to benefit from the developmental flow from Lagos. Now when you get to Berger, the boundary between Lagos and Ogun, you can’t differentiate which area belongs to Lagos, which belongs to Ogun State. Again, when you look at the history of the two States, they are intertwined.
The indigenes of Ogun State are major players in Lagos. They’re contributing their quotas to the development of Lagos and same to Ogun State. So there can’t be any rivalry.
