By Bola BOLAWOLE,
You must have heard it said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has the Nigerian media in his pockets. You may want to wonder how “deep” Tinubu’s pockets are that he can swallow all Nigerian media organizations! In some sense, that idiomatic expression can be true: Tinubu belongs to the tribe of a few Nigerians with “deep” pockets; meaning that they have near-limitless financial resources and clout with which they can buy or influence anything and anyone. Don’t forget that even the Scriptures say “money answereth all things” (Ecclesiastes 10: 19 KJV).
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You will also remember that a similar thing was said of the late MKO Abiola, winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, the freest and fairest in Nigeria’s chequered history, but which was annulled for inexplicable reasons by military dictator, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.
But is media ownership not too diffused in Nigeria to allow an individual to put the entire Nigeria media in his or her pockets – including even social media? Are proprietary interests not too conflicting and competing for that to happen? Are today’s Nigerian journalists not too educated, too enlightened, too sophisticated, too urbane, and too professional for a single individual to pocket all of them? What of ideological differences, with many journalists fiercely rejecting pecuniary, “brown envelop” and yellow journalism even at the point of the bayonet?
Many of today’s journalists are proud species and professionals to the core who are committed to their watchdog role of holding the government accountable to the people, regardless of whose ox is gored and without exercising any fear or favor. Yes, there are “white legs” in every profession but Professor Richard A. Joseph’s “prebendalism”, where sentiments such as religion, ethnicity, race, personal relations, and such other sense of entitlements trump merit will hardly allow for a single individual to pocket the media in its entirety.
I got thinking along these lines after reading two of my highly respected columns last Sunday. One was Sonala Olumhense’s “Sonala Olumhense Syndicated” titled “The 2027 election is a survey on stupidity” published on the back page of the Sunday PUNCH newspaper of August 30, 2026.
It was in a very, very bad taste. Sonala, as the Editorial Page editor of The GUARDIAN newspaper, had invited me to the Editorial Board of the then self-proclaimed (and justifiably so!) ‘Flagship” of the Nigerian media. In fact, my first-ever publications in any newspaper were in The GUARDIAN under Sonala’s editorship. They were titled “If I should die unemployed” and “How not to plead for prisoners of conscience.”
Sonala’s line of argument in his piece referenced above hurts, but not the choices he made because he is entitled to them – although, in the same breath, he had denied other Nigerians the right to make their own choices! That faux pas did nothing to diminish Sonala in my estimation, but I felt sorry he went overboard in his desperation to pull Tinubu down but, in the end, promoted vacuity when he said “When there is the kind of menace that APC represents, CREDIBLE OPPOSITION IS ANYONE ELSE (my emphasis) on the ballot.” No sir!
The second of my “Sunday tonic” that got me thinking was Idowu Akinlotan’s “PALLADIUM” on the back page of THE NATION newspaper of Sunday, August 30, 2026 titled “Osun, 2027: APC contends with hostile media.” Reviewing the Ekiti and Osun off-season governorship elections, the one won by APC and the other lost by it, Akinlotan concluded that the Nigerian media was (has become) anti-APC/Tinubu. Can that be true? When and where did it start? Was the media at any point pro-APC/Tinubu? What went wrong? First, snippets from Akinlotan’s piece before we draw our own conclusions:
“Hard as they tried, leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) failed to penetrate the reinforced armour of media establishments opposed to their electoral successes since 2023. The ruling party’s fortunes have not changed. Most loathe the ruling party. That the APC won in 2023 without their help and despite their opposition has left the said media enraged. As the party prepares for the 2027 campaigns, and given the unyielding posture of the said media houses, it must by now have made up its mind to go it alone. The party is unable to win new media friends, and has perhaps given up.
“To make a headway (in the) next polls, it must first reflect on the deeply contrasting Ekiti and Osun governorship elections. On June 20 and August 15, the two elections were conducted, barely two months apart, with few intervening variables, and in the same Yoruba region. If it hopes to win next year, it should review newspaper publications of the period June 21 and 22; and August 16 and 17, all representing before and after the poll reports. The media reports were both revealing and troubling.
“Before the Ekiti poll, the papers displayed a sense of resignation, warning darkly about the consequences of rigging the poll or denying the electorate the right to elect a governor of their choice. But the poll went seamlessly, the outcome predictable weeks before, as former governors of the state queued behind the incumbent, Biodun Oyebanji. For media houses which had repeatedly rhapsodised democracy and freedom of choice unfettered by electoral shenanigans, it was expected they would capture the popular mood and abjure the projection of their beliefs and prejudices on the electorate. From casting doubt on the integrity of the polls in their June 20 reports, the media went on, a day after the poll on June 21, to feign objectivity that Mr. Oyebanji was Ieading in the vote count amid vote-buying allegations, unconvincing turnout, and other insinuated malfeasances. There always had to be a but!”
Mr. Akinlotan was right to a great extent. I had written off the Ekiti election, ever before it was conducted, as a coronation of sorts because the opposition, embroiled at the national and local levels by court cases, INEC deregistration threats, internal squabbles and inability to form a united front, did not stand a chance in the election.
The media grudge that Akinlotan spoke about here was actually visible.
But when it came to Osun where opposition Gov. Ademola Adeleke was giving APC a hell of trouble, the opposition media, if I may call it that, came alive, and when Adeleke was coasting home to victory, they celebrated it the way they never celebrated Oyebanji in Ekiti; same when Adeleke was eventually announced as the winner of the election.
Let me start by saying that Akinlotan’s advice that Tinubu should ignore the “opposition” media and go it alone will not serve the president any good.
A better option is to find out what went wrong with a man who courted and cultivated the media, and who was loved and supported by it, and why the reverse is now the case – if we are to take Akinlotan’s narrative as the gospel truth.
Besides, enough evidence has emerged that elections are not won here on social media or by newspaper endorsements.
One: Tinubu started on a wrong footing with the first appointment of a spokesperson. The guy was clearly a misfit for the office. Two: The initial in-fighting within Tinubu’s media team seriously harmed and hampered their performance and dented their image. Three: The truculence of some of Tinubu’s presidential aides, instead of being accommodating and conciliatory, offended and isolated many of their professional colleagues. Four: Some names on Tinubu’s media team embarrass true professionals. Five: Has Tinubu’s media team been proactive enough? How often, how persistently, do they reach out to their professional colleagues with vital information? They should constantly court and cultivate their professional colleagues and not expect it to be the other way round.
Historically, the media is adversarial. It started by fighting the Colonial government for the country’s Independence. I do not think the media has totally purged that advocacy from its bloodline.
It is an aberration when we describe the government and the media as “partners in progress.” The media’s duty is to hold the government accountable to the people by constantly holding government’s feet to the fire – but it should also give kudos when it is richly deserved, just like Babafemi Ojudu did recently on the Lagos-Calabar expressway signature project of the Tinubu administration.
Traditionally, the media supports the underdog. In Osun, Gov. Adeleke was the perceived underdog whereas in Ekiti, the disparate opposition parties were the underdog.
Professionally, the media is sensational. Bad news makes better news. Hence we were taught that when a dog bites a man, it is not news but when a man bites a dog, bedlam! Sensational news sells newspapers better and faster. Ask readers themselves! They determine what they would like to read!
Respectfully, I do not think Akinlotan’s scare-mongering is the right way to go.
Tinubu should instead re-invent his media team to become more conciliatory and accessible to their professional colleagues – be they so-called opposition or friendly media. Engage with them more frequently.
If people are made to see the other side of any issue, many of them will become more supportive and compassionate.
When people are shut out, deliberately or inadvertently, you lose the right to complain that they are hostile.
Besides, dissenting voices oil the wheel of democracy. Effective media relations takes no one as an enemy but as inescapable partners in the same Nigerian project, even if we see things from different or conflicting prisms or perspectives.
Office-holders should always have it at the back of their mind that there is a terminal date to every appointment.
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If in doubt, ask yourself where are the men and women who occupied the office and sat on the same seat that you occupy today? You, too, will become history!
(Published in the TREASURES column on the back page of the NEW TELEGRAPH newspaper of Wednesday, 2 September, 2026).
