BY KANMI ADEMILUYI
- Building independent institutions in a democracy
IN this season of playing on words perhaps we can indulge ourselves by playing on ‘Trust’ after the unfair five million naira fine imposed on Trust TV a subsidiary of the Daily Trust media group.
The fine is unfair for several reasons. For a start it is aforethought. The information minister clearly instructed the regulator the National Broadcasting Corporation [NBC] as to what to do. The instruction shows unambiguously that there is nothing ‘independent ‘ about the regulator. This is as unacceptable as it gets in a democracy that should be anchored on freedom of expression and the right to access information. Furthermore, the media organs were fined including DSTV without being allowed to state their case thereby negating the constitutional right to fair hearing..It is my opinion that the fine as well as the glaring absence of due process should be challenged.
The critical issue here is the manner of democracy we are practicing. We appear not to be transiting from a post – military interregnum ‘ semi-democracy’ as The Economist newspaper of London so churlishly put it almost two decades. The fines unfairly put on some media organisations goes well beyond the issue of freedom of speech. It is interwoven with the luncompetituveness of the economy.
In the world of today innovation is the key to economic growth and sustainability. And openesss, as well as access to information, is key to triggering off the creativity needed to build a competitive economy.
This cannot be achieved without dismantling the stifling impediments constructed during decades of authoritarian rule by the military.
For starters, the concept of a ‘Ministry of information ‘ is incompatible with democracy and it must go. Examples abound.
In the United Kingdom, the Ministry of information was disbanded within three weeks of the end of the second world war. It had been set up as a part of the war effort in the first place. The same thing was replicated throughout much of Europe. The experience of the Nazi occupation and the use of propaganda as a tool of subjugation by the occupiers made it clear that there could be no space for state-coordinated propaganda mechanisms in the newly restored democracies.
We have to learn from this. The issue should not be about a temporary transient personality. It is about deepening our democracy. We have had all manner of garrulous personalities on the past in particular during the military interregnum. It should have ended with that era. If we are going to build a competitive economic format we must have independent institutions of the state. Having institutions in a relationship of subordination to temporary apparatchiks is not the way to go.
Dismantling the Ministry of information and what it stands for will be like a democratic spring, a renewal; it will allow the regulators to develop the technical capacity which will come with real independence devoid of ministerial independence to carry out proper regulatory functions. This is long overdue and should no longer be postponed.
Finally we call for the reversal of the punitive and unfair fines.
