MANAGING COMMUNICATION FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The Second Anniversary Lecture of Bowen University Radio, on Monday, September 30, 2019, at the Bowen University, Iwo, Osun State.
By Dare Babarinsa
Chairman, Gaskia Media Ltd
I congratulate the Vice-Chancellor and members of his team for leading this great institution. I also congratulate the management of the Bowen University Radio, who have deemed it fit to grant me the privilege of standing before this distinguished audience. I have been asked to speak on Managing Communication for National Development. Communication in this case, I presume, means the media, especially electronic media. The nation we are poised to develop, I also presume is our beloved Nigeria. I intend to do justice to this topic.
This university is a faith-based institution named after the great American Christian missionary, the Reverend Thomas Jefferson Bowen who died 144 years ago. We were told that the Reverend Bowen travelled from Lagos to Iwo on foot and finally settled in Ijaiye in 1850. He fell in love with the Yoruba language and wrote a book titled, Grammar and Dictionary of the Yoruba Language. It was published in 1858.
Unlike the Reverend Bowen, I travelled here in my car. It is an indication that a lot has changed since Bowen went back to the United States in the 19th Century. He was a simple priest and would have been amazed that this great institution has been named in his honour.
The ideals and ideas of Christian theology and morality that defined Bowen’s ministry has endured and it would remain relevant forever. Bowen would have enthusiastically endorsed the Bowen University Founders declaration that the university “is conceived as a centre of leaning and research of distinction, combining academic excellence with love of humanity, borne out of a God-fearing attitude in accordance with the Baptist tradition of ethical behavior, social responsibility and democratic ethos.”
With this in mind, there is no doubt too that your radio station would also be ethically guided beyond the expected definitions outlined by the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, NBC. The Bowen University Radio is only celebrating its second anniversary, but we know that the Nigerian journey began a long time ago.
Nigeria was officially proclaimed a country by Lord Frederick Lugard on January 1, 1914, at the old Race Course, in Lagos which has now been named in honour of our first and only Prime-Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa.
Lugard declared on that historic day: “Today Nigeria enters on a new stage of its progress and we all join in the earnest hope that the era now inaugurated will prove, not only a new departure in material prosperity, but also that the coming years will increase the individual happiness and freedom from oppression and raise the standard of civilisation and of comfort of the many millions who inhabit this large country.”
It is for us to judge whether indeed the journey of Nigeria has brought happiness to the individual citizen and whether he has achieved comfort. Whatever may be the state of Nigeria and the degree of happiness of Nigerians, we journalists have a large share of the praise and the blame.
Our great country has passed through three historic stages since the amalgamation. One was the fight for independence in which many great journalists participated, including the great Hebert Macaulay, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the Editor-in-Chief of the West African Pilot, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the founder of the Nigerian Tribune, Mr Ernest Ikoli, first editor of the Daily Times and Chief Ladoke Akintola, former editor of the Daily Service.
After the battle for independence was won by our nationalists, the next great challenge was the Nigerian Civil War. Nigerian journalists participated fully in the Civil War not only as reporters and photographers, but also as propagandists. As the old saying goes, the truth is the first casualty of war. In the early years of the war when the Biafran troops moved into the Mid-Western Region (now Edo and Delta States), soldiers in Ibadan under the command of Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo of the Ibadan Garrison Organisation, moved in to confront the Biafran troops.
They joined soldiers of the Second Division under the command of Colonel Murtala Muhammed who moved in from Lagos. In order to stem the Biafran advances, the Nigerian troops destroyed the bridges at Ore and other entry points into the West. But the Nigerian radio and newspapers reported that it was the Biafrans that destroyed the bridges which delayed Nigerian troops from flushing them out! In the end, the battle was joined in Ore where the brigade from Ibadan, headed by Major Iluyomade, worsted the Biafran army and they were forced to retreat.
The Battle of Ore remains a singular event of the Nigerian Civil War.
In the battle for the control of the airwaves, the Biafran clearly had the upper hand. This was because many of the old hands in Radio Nigeria, Lagos, were of Igbo origin and they were now in