Journalism and the lot of tokenism

By Niran Adedokun

Writing about journalism in Nigeria is an emotional point for me. As my first love and the profession that took the first ten years of my career trajectory, I miss journalism sorely.
There is just something controlling and almost obsessive about the profession. You dabble into journalism and you are in for a lifetime romance. It is simply one of the most possessive endeavours that I know.
Someone is likely to ask if I still refer to myself as a journalist. Well, my answer would be an emphatic yes. I think anyone who has ever had a stint with journalism would agree with my assertion that “once a journalist, always a journalist”, it just sits somewhere in you.  So, even when you are no longer in the news room, you find a way to remain in the fold anyhow.  People are never able to quit writing, no matter how they try, journalism seems to demand a life-long commitment from everyone who ever gets into its hold.
Which is why I respect practising journalists, anywhere in the world but more so in Nigeria. Everyone who wakes up in the morning, goes to cover assignments and ends up in a newsroom every afternoon deserves our utmost respect.  I know there are reasons to question the integrity of certain journalists. Like every other field of human endeavour, journalism courts its own share of dishonourable people, but that is a matter for another day. My concern today is to salute the courage, doggedness and long-suffering of every Nigerian journalist, whether he is in the print, electronic, privately or publicly owned outfit.
It is hard to be a journalist in Nigeria and I cannot finish telling you why in a single article. So today, I am concerned about the welfare of the Nigerian journalist.  Sometime last week, I came across a statement made by Mr. Banji Sarumoh, General Manager, NTA, Ilorin. While speaking at a programme organized by the Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Sarumoh was quoted to have described Nigerian journalists as having the worst condition of service in the world and I would assume that the man knew what he was talking about.
The first salary I earned as a journalist in the early 1990s was about N3, 500 and there was a weekly transport allowance of, I think N200. This I almost never got because of the fact that the newspaper I worked for was not making money. In fact, most of us at the newspaper had no peace. It was in the military era and the organization was not friendly with the government of the day. Our proprietors were under constant harassment from security forces and so they hardly had the presence of mind to nurture the business.
Before I left journalism in 2002, I was already a “big boy”. My salary was about 35,000 monthly although I would be lucky if I got my salary once in four months. It was a life I couldn’t understand because for the preceding six years that I worked at The PUNCH, arguably the most welfare friendly organisation in Nigeria’s media landscape, my salary was paid before the end of the month. This was always followed by a monthly transport allowance of N8, 000 in the second week of every month. I must also point out that this big boy salary was one-fifth of what entry point employees earned in some other industries at that time. Salaries were not just meager however; they also mostly came in arrears. It was a frustrating life especially as we saw our contemporaries in other industries smiling to the banks at the end of every month.
I remember a story I heard from one of my mentors in journalism. One of his contemporaries had secured a job in a multinational in the oil and gas industry after some years in journalism. I learnt that on the day the man got his first salary on the new job, he withdrew every kobo of it from the bank; just to be sure that it was not a dream. And when he got home, he went into his room and laid his salary on the floor wad by wad after which he made the pile of notes his bed for the night.  He could not just believe that he could ever earn that kind of money and if this was a dream, he was ready to live in this dreamland forever.
This story was about 15 years ago but things are not much different. Last week, I read about the unfortunate death of two staffers of a media organization because they could not pay their medical bills. Workers in this organization, as in so many others, do not have the benefit of any medical facilities yet their salaries, for which they have worked, were not paid.  And the way journalism is, salaries paid or not, you have to keep servicing your beat and turning in stories for as long as you remain in the employ of your media organization, or until the reporter falls ill or something more untoward happens!
Sometimes you want to accept the usual excuse of paucity of funds which media owners usually give but facts that you hear from those who keep the accounts of these companies and the flamboyant lifestyle of some of the owners put the lie on such claims. As it stands, the average Nigeria journalist is endangered. He is poorly remunerated and does not get his pay on time. His health and that of his family is almost always in jeopardy as very few media organizations have any medical plans for their staff. The best plan available in the Nigerian media is said to allow 50,000 for the staff and his family per annum!  No wonder someone thinks we have the worst condition of service in the world?
 I want to submit that the Nigerian Union of Journalists (N.U.J) needs to do a bit more than the occasional picketing of media organizations. The NUJ has the capacity to demand some standards in the working condition of journalists all over the country. They have the capacity to insist on the prompt payment of the salaries of staff of media organizations and the resting of any organization that cannot discharge its responsibility to staff in this regard, over a period of time. Unless we ensure that the conditions of service of journalists improve, we cannot even begin to discuss integrity or the lack of it.