Thirty-two years after the annulment of June 12, 1993, Nigeria is still wrestling with the questions that election raised about democracy, power, and the media. The poll is widely remembered as “the freest ever conducted election in the political history of Nigeria.” It was meant to be the second transition from military rule to civilian government after 1979, and before 1999 brought the current dispensation. The transition programme under General Ibrahim Babangida was described at the time as one of the most ambitious and expensive attempts at democratic transition anywhere. Yet it also became one of the most protracted, controversial and unstable. Corruption, abuse of power and the cult of personality around the process made many Nigerians doubt that it would ever be completed. One reason the programme dragged, I argue, was the partisanship of the broadcast media. As I noted in earlier research, that partisanship had become so endemic that political actors could hardly function without it, and the patriotic objectives of informing, educating and entertaining the public were lost along the way.
My concern in this piece is not to rehash the entire history of June 12, but to revisit the role of the Nigerian Television Authority through a lens that Max Weber opened more than a century ago. Weber, writing about the press at the turn of the 19th century, called it “one of the great cultural problems of the present.” The problem he was investigating had to do with the dysfunction of the press – how it was organized, owned, controlled, and how it performed in upholding values. Even though Weber was writing about newspapers, his concern applies to broadcast media in Nigeria today. Television, as later scholars have confirmed, is a major source of political learning and the most used source for public affairs information. When such a medium drifts from its public duty, the consequences for democracy can be severe.
Much has been written on the annulment of June 12. What has been missing is a focused look at NTA’s specific role. That gap is what this critique tries to address. The central episode began with NTA’s 9PM network news report showing the casting of the vote of the presumed winner, Basorun M.K.O. Abiola, near his residence. Abiola was shown wearing an attire that bore the portrait or logo of his party, the Social Democratic Party. Once that report went out, opponents in the National Republican Convention turned it into a political issue. They declared it a violation of electoral law and a form of illegal campaigning. From that moment the controversy escalated until the military annulled the election. The report itself became the spark.
To understand why that broadcast mattered so much, we need two ideas from media theory. First, people do not just absorb media messages passively; they use media to satisfy needs and gratify desires. The interaction between audiences and media is best explained by what they do with the content and what they get from it. That perspective, which Weber himself anticipated, suggests we should pay less attention to what media do to people and more attention to what people do with media messages. If a broadcaster with national reach chooses to frame an event in a particular way for three decades, that choice shapes what citizens think about and how they act.
Second is the agenda-setting function. The media may not tell us what to think, but they strongly influence what we think about. Over time, by giving prominence to some issues and downplaying others, media cue the public about what is important. The prominence of a story – its placement, tone, visuals – tells viewers how seriously to take it. That principle explains why the NTA broadcast had such far-reaching effects. In a country that had been under military dictatorship since 1983, a decade of repression had left citizens highly sensitive. A news report that framed Abiola’s attire as an offense was bound to provoke strong reactions. Indeed, the effects were immediate: NRC leaders called for Abiola’s disqualification, the SDP responded with counter-arguments about whether the image was a donkey or a unicorn, and the argument continued until the election was set aside.
How did NTA get to that point? The Authority was created by military decree on April 1, 1977, as a public corporation meant to serve the public interest. Before that, the Federal Government had joined regional governments in 1962 to establish the Nigerian Television Service in Lagos. The 1977 decree structured NTA as a policy-making body with a chairman, six zonal chairmen, a director-general and board members drawn from media, arts, management, engineering, finance and education. Their tenure was three years, except for the DG who is a public officer and chief executive responsible for policy execution.
On paper, that structure looks balanced. In practice, the organization, ownership and control of NTA have aligned with the problem Weber identified. From 1962 to date, NTA has operated as a government-owned medium. All its top officials are government appointees. Irrespective of whether the government is civilian or military, the station has functioned as a megaphone for those in power. During the Second Republic, for example, NTA existed to secure the interests of the ruling party at the federal level and in states controlled by the same party. States run by opposition parties were either blacked out or given unfavourable coverage. To ensure absolute control, President Shehu Shagari redeployed the long-serving DG to the Ministry of Communications and appointed a party stalwart in his place, expecting the station to portray only the president, his party and their achievements. That move was an utter violation of NTA’s own decree. The lesson is clear: when ownership and control are concentrated in government, objectivity becomes a cultural problem.
The performance of NTA in the June 12 period also negated the basic template for media professionals. Journalism requires courage, impartiality and a commitment to truth. But media professionals do not operate in a vacuum. They face pressure from owners, executives and political interests – the people who pay the bills and often regard influence over content as their right. That pressure showed up in dramatic ways. One newscaster, Chima Edozie, caused a shock on air when he scanned a bulletin, discovered false information, threw the script down and announced his resignation live: “I hereby tender my resignation. I can’t continue with this stuff, no, no, no, I am fed up,” he said and walked out on camera. His action exposed what many knew but few said: gatekeepers in the newsroom were making judgments about what was newsworthy based on interests other than public service.
The Abiola broadcast fits this pattern. I am not contesting that the event should have been reported. Voters needed evidence that the candidate voted. But the way NTA packaged the report is the issue. The station used an extremely close shot that made the offending image clearly visible to viewers across the country. After more than a decade of military rule, what the public needed was a long-range shot showing Abiola casting his vote, not a close-up that amplified the logo controversy. Instead, the station conveyed politically loaded images. The most effective form of propaganda, as media critics have noted, is not outright falsehood but framing – the way a story is packaged, the amount of exposure it gets, its placement, tone, headlines and visuals. That is how media can mislead audiences before they have a chance to think for themselves. In this case, the NTA report misled the nation, and we are yet to fully recover from its effects.
The framing problem was compounded by the composition of NTA’s newsroom and board at the time, which were filled with military apologists. Against the backdrop of a military that was reluctant to relinquish power, the story of Abiola appears to have been doctored or slanted to achieve a political effect. Hand in hand with political bias went the problem of personalization. A reporter must not inject himself too much into a story or it loses credibility and begins to look like promotional material. NTA personalized the issue and held on to it tenaciously until the election was annulled.
The cost of that partisanship was high. Nigeria’s post-independence elections from 1964/65 onward have been marked by tears, sorrow and bloodletting. June 12 was no different. Thousands died in protests against the annulment. Partisanship in political reporting has been the bane of our democracy. Objectivity is prized by audiences and claimed by many journalists, yet consumers constantly complain that reporters are not impartial. For television broadcasting in Nigeria, objectivity has been a cultural problem from inception to date. It is why many viewers still see government-owned stations as megaphones rather than public service broadcasters, and why viewership remains low.
If sociology is concerned with the well-being and healthy growth of society, then the NTA case raises serious questions. Weber warned early about the effects of broadcast media on public opinion when radio and television began to spread in the 1930s and 1940s. The multiplier effect of NTA’s June 12 report confirms his concern. The station had the power to shape what millions of Nigerians thought about at a critical moment, and it used that power in a way that undermined democratic choice.
So what attention is needed to prevent a repeat? First, government must allow all government-owned television stations to operate freely without undue intervention, in the interest of the public. Second, the politicization of board appointments must stop. Boards should be composed of professionals, not party loyalists. Third, training and retraining of media professionals in government media should be continuous, to reinforce ethics and professional standards. Fourth, the ethics of journalism as put together by the Nigerian Guild of Editors must be strictly observed. Finally, scholarly work that revalidates Weber’s media postulations should be sustained, because the problems he identified are not historical relics. They are alive in our newsrooms today.
In closing, the role of NTA in the June 12 annulment is a textbook case of media dysfunctionalism from a Weberian perspective. The station’s lack of objectivity from 1962 till date is a major cultural problem. Viewers still see NTA as a government megaphone, and many believe it was used by the military to achieve a hidden agenda. The military that conducted the election was not sincere about handing over power; it was looking for excuses to stay. NTA provided one. If we want democratic growth, sustainability, peace and security, we must confront this problem directly. Television will remain the most powerful source of political information for most Nigerians. Its duty is to reflect public interest, not to shape it to serve those in power. Weber’s warning from the age of newspapers is still relevant in the age of television. We ignore it at our peril.
Editor’s Note: This opinion piece is based on the academic work of Prof. Tayo Popoola, a Professor of Political Communication in the Faculty of Communication and Media studies, University of Lagos; and is published with the author’s permission.