Herd Mentality vs Journalism Ethics – The Case of Abimbola Adelakun

By Felicia Obasa-Adejuwon

Abimbola Adelakun, a Nigerian writer is obviously not aware that investigative reporting is to journalism what theoretical research is to science, having the potential to present new realities and shatter old paradigm. We need to move away from presenting mere unfounded hearsay as the present day reality.

In this day of social media, with its attendant misuse and abuse, it is a disservice to all the education we have received for years and decades, to just copy and paste headlines and stories with zero factual evidence.

Many have only followed misleading headlines and click-bait blog posts hook, line and sinker, without reading the body of the articles they hold as truth. Abimbola went beyond all rational thought to say Osinbajo said the stories of kidnappings in Nigeria were “wildly exaggerated”.

If this was some random fake news WhatsApp broadcast message or Facebook post going mischievously viral, one would pay no heed. This is a journalist with enough years on the beat to be teaching Journalism as a course in any university, who has chosen to be clever by half, and mischievous in full.

The direct transcripts of the remarks by VP Osinbajo are here QUOTED for all clarity and zero ambiguity. The reader is very free to use any word search tool available on your device, to see where the words ‘exaggerated’ or ‘wildly exaggerated’ show up. Follow the quotation marks.

“I think there is also a lot of politics involved in some of the information as it comes up. I think it is also important to point out that this new wave of issues of security came immediately after the elections. And there is always a connection between this issue of security and elections because many times, politicians’ arm several of these individuals during the electioneering period, and immediately after an election cycle, many of them, having nothing to do and with arms all over the place, resort to the fastest way of making money which is to abduct somebody and ask for a ransom. And that is just one side of the problem”.

“When people say there is security problem here and there, it is not one thing, it is several different things but if it is described as one thing then it will look bigger than it really is. And I am deeply worried about the fact that we might find ourselves unable to resolve these problems unless we drill down to see what the problems are.”

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“With respect to general kidnapping which we have seen in certain parts of the country, again this is not entirely new. When you listen to some of the stories, some of them are simply not true anyway. Some are fueled by politics, but there are cases of kidnapping, there is no question at all about that….and every story we try to track and trace. When you track them, you find out that people just tell some stories, but the truth anyway is that there is kidnapping in places where it has taken place. The way to check it is the work we are doing with State governments namely using technology to track cases. These are economic crimes; if people know that they will be caught, and they will not be allowed to get away with their loot, it will stop in the places where it is taking place. That is really the work we are doing with the State governments. We are doing this in the various zones where we see that there is a rash of incidents. We are trying to put in place trackers and all sorts of other equipment that can be used to locate these criminals.”

“I am not so sure how many follow the number of arrests that have been made in different state police commands, several have been made. I don’t think the problem is as massive as that, I think we can deal with the question of kidnapping quite easily. I am sure that not so long a time, the news will be a lot better in terms of kidnapping and we will feel more comfortable about life at home.”

We know it takes a lot of guts to admit an error, especially for someone who is chasing clout on social media by twisting every utterance of others, in order to suit personal flawed narratives. It is still honorable to take the high road and publish only what has passed through rational thought and analytical scrutiny.

In her haste to jump on the bandwagon, Abimbola Adelakun has sacrificed all journalism ethics for the lure of her misinformed cheerleaders. She wants all false narratives to be upheld as the truth, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. I will bid her Godspeed on this journey, even as we all know it never ends well when journalists start diving to such ghastly conclusions, the way she is wont to do.

When she wrote that she agrees with Osinbajo that some of the stories in circulation are embellished accounts.  She immediately does a quick 180 degrees ‘about-turn’ that would make trained soldiers look ordinary, to say what she does not fully buy is the idea that the motive behind creating those stories is all political mischief nor does she agree that it is a problem of social media.

In the same breath she claims to have seen countless stories of kidnapping, abuse, and rape circulated on social media forms like WhatsApp that look too contrived to be true.

It becomes rather unclear what academic or enlightening discourse she is trying to initiate by being neither here nor there.

Felicia Obasa-Adejuwon is a political and public affairs analyst