MKO ABIOLA ON CBS & '60 MINUTES'
Kale Oyedeji
August 1996, I fing most interesting today.
'Kale Oyedeji
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From: Tejumola Olaniyan <to...@UVA.PCMAIL.VIRGINIA.EDU>
Subject: MKO ABIOLA ON CBS & '60 MINUTES'
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Dear good folks,
I was going through microfilms of old Nigerian newspapers recently
when I came across the article below by MKO Abiola. As a
historical document, I find it infinitely interesting on several
fronts. I hope you do too.
Teju Olaniyan
-------------------------
>From THE PUNCH, Tuesday January 3, 1984, p.7.
"C.B.S. DOCUMENTARY ON NIGERIA:
'60 MINUTES OF PURE FICTION' M.K.O replies American T.V. Producer"
[in italics] Recently CBS, an American Television organisation
ran a documentary on Nigeria, on its popular Programme "60
minutes". To Chief M.K.O. Abiola, Chairman of Concord Press of
Nigeria Limited and numerous other Nigerians who watched the
programme on American Television, it was nothing but an imaginary
tale of all things negative about Nigeria and her Peoples. Chief
Abiola consequently wrote a rejoinder to the Producer of the
programme, alluding to Western media bias not only against Africa
but also the entire third world.
Here we publish a copy of the letter. [end italics]
I am a 46-year-old Nigerian and a regular viewer of your "60
minutes" programme. I saw the programme on Nigeria today, and
strenuously object to the inaccurate impression you gave to the
American public through exaggerations, half truths and falsehoods.
You have also done a greater disservice to the journalism
profession as a whole and the many hard-working journalists who try
to give an accurate account of the facts, which pain me greatly as
a publisher of newspapers of mass information. The job of a
journalist is to inform the uninformed but it appears that your
programme took advantage of the limited knowledge of the average
American viewer on Nigeria.
It appears to me, however, that the American public is much
brighter and much more questioning than you give them credit for as
evidenced by the excellent article on the December 12, 1983 edition
of Time Magazine entitled "Journalism Under Fire". It was notable
in that article, which probed the low esteem in which the Press was
held in the United States and illustrated the dramatic reduction in
confidence in the Press from an already low just under 30% in 1976
to 13.7% in 1983, singled out your programme "60 Minutes" as one
which promotes the "posture of perennial mistrust".
I do not intend to dwell at too great a length on the general
inaccuracies, exaggerations and half-truths which you have spewed
out to an unsuspecting public. I rather want to comment on some
specifics. When you infer that uninterrupted power supplies for
computer systems is unique to Nigeria because of our unreliable
power supply, you are wrong. All large computer systems in the
United States and throughout the world also are powered by
uninterrupted power supplies. As any engineering student is aware,
the entire memory of a computer can be lost through just a
momentary power interruption so they are powered through a battery
to an inverter. The battery is not an automobile battery which you
so incorrectly stated but a large capacity industrial battery.
Which of your viewers would have believed that the batteries you
pictured were "automobile" batteries?
To infer that all of Nigeria's modern telecommunications
equipment were housed in the NET (Nigerian External
Telecommunications) building is totally wrong. That building
houses only one of the present two gateway switches for connection
to the outside world. The other is in Kaduna. Within the Lagos
metropolitan area alone, there are fourteen local telephone
exchanges none of which is located in the NET building. By the
way, the NET building was not the headquarters of the Ministry of
Communications and did not house the office of the Honourable
Minister as you reported. The highest ranking official having
offices there was the NET Managing Director. The NET Chairman
might have had an office there, but he was not intended to be a
full-time Chairman.
You talked of our Lagos traffic and our famous "go-slows"
giving as an example the airport to downtown Lagos. This may be
true occasionally but is certainly not the usual condition. Most
people can travel between the airport and Victoria Island, which,
as you know, is beyond downtown Lagos, in under one hour except for
the morning rush hour and even then it rarely takes more than one
and a half hours. I find traffic in New York or Washington during
the morning and evening rush hours to be worse than Lagos.
To state that businessmen carry attache cases full of one
hundred dollar bills which they hand out to get things done is the
height of inaccurate reporting. I do not doubt that some
unscrupulous businessmen, especially expatriate ones, give this
form of "dash" but such a practice, not only being illegal in both
my country and yours, would be most foolhardy considering the
increasing incidents of armed robbery. What better target for
robbers than an attache case full of cash, in hundred dollar bills!
A statement such as this sounds more like expatriate bar-room talk
at the Eko Hotel than reality.
Likewise your comments about housing rents. Most certainly
the rent for housing in the Lagos area is exorbitant by any
standards, driven up in the past several years by expatriate firms
operating with a gold-rush, construction-camp mentality but your
statements about the magnitude of the rents is pure fantasy.
Possibly a few very large houses with special features may rent for
the equivalent of $150,000 per year with the rent paid three years
in advance as you stated but the average house, even on Victoria
Island, rents for the equivalent of Naira 50,000-55,000 per year
(which is the equivalent of $68,000 to $74,000 per year) with the
rent paid two years in advance. Apartments average $40,000 to
$50,000 per year. These rents are high enough without your gross
exaggeration and if correctly reported would have accomplished your
purpose without leaving your comments open to question. Maybe some
rents are paid to foreign bank accounts as you reported but if so
it would be only the rare exception - not the rule. This is a very
foolish and illegal act which could have severe repercussions for
both parties to such an arrangement. I head two companies which
together employ 300 expatriates and we have never been asked to pay
nor have we ever paid any rents to a foreign bank account.
As you reported, Mr. Dele Giwa is the editor of one of my
newspapers, the "Sunday Concord", a member of the Concord Group of
Newspapers. He is, of course, entitled to his opinion. I take
issue, however, with his comments on corruption. I agree that
there is corruption within our government and that it is one of our
biggest problems but again as with most of the information in your
programme, the comments exaggerate the truth. To say that
ministers receive tens of millions of Naira, or even dollars for
that matter and that anyone stealing less than one million Naira
feels that it is too small to even talk about is just not only
ridiculous but unreal. For that matter, who are those who would be
foolish enough to talk about money they stole or received
illegally. If Mr. Giwa has firm evidence of misdoings of this
magnitude, it is his duty as a responsible journalist and a
patriotic Nigerian to bring it to the attention of the public and
not to accuse unnamed officials by innuendo. I know that Dele Giwa
has enough courage, if he has the facts, to name names and give
details. One wonders why he did not do so on "60 minutes" or
elsewhere since.
You failed completely in your task of informing the American
public of our problems, and we certainly do have many. For
example, your programme was silent totally on the near-total
dominance of foreign companies in the Nigeria economy, an unhealthy
situation. These problems are not necessarily unique to Nigeria,
as you seem to infer, but are applicable to other developing
countries which have permitted their economies to be dominated by
a single product the market for which fell apart. These problems
are also caused by expatriate businessmen who adopt a hit-and-run
approach to their business in Nigeria. Or, expatriate firms who,
not content with the millions they make as "consultants" also play
the double role of "contractors", usually on the same jobs. They
may use different names, at times, but in some cases, they are so
confident that they use the same name in both activities. This
pork-barrel situation is found in several Ministries and hundreds
of millions of Naira get drained away by the process. "60 Minutes"
did not investigate these glaring cases of graft probably because
the principal actors are foreigners or because they did not make
many headlines in our local papers. An in-depth analysis of that
subject must go behind the headlines to get the full facts of the
situation. It is sad but true that most Nigerians do not know the
full facts about the devils that haunt our beloved country. The
point I am making is that the real "deals" in Nigeria are
masterminded by foreigners, who later turn round to give a nasty
impression of "corruption in Nigeria" - a case of the pot calling
the kettle black.
It is these same expatriates who drive the price of properties
to the roof. To ensure privacy, they take whole houses "at any
cost" although they live in them no more than one month in the
year. For the rest of the year, the posh "guest houses", as they
are called, are used as perks by their Nigerian accomplices for all
manners of things. Some expatriates take longish long-term leases
in hotels although they hardly occupy the suites. They largely
cause the high prices they complain about. Yes, these double-
dealers ride on the back of a few unpatriotic Nigerians, often
former top civil servants and greedy politicians, but most of the
windfall are carted away by these sharp foreign operators thousands
of miles from our shores. Because former top civil servants are
involved, that guarantees the ready "co-operation" of their former
junior colleagues still in the service at various levels, including
the Central Bank and Ministry of Finance. These expatriates of all
lines are the purveyors of corruption in developing countries. It
is sad that "60 minutes" made no mention of these sources of
corrupt practices in our Society.
The effects in Nigeria are magnified because of our large and
growing population - one of every four Africans is a Nigerian. But
you missed completely the excellent opportunity which you had to
explore this situation, how it came about and what corrective
efforts are being taken or can be taken. Instead you dealt in
sensationalism which accomplished nothing. What can be gained by
giving the American public an inaccurate view of Nigeria?
Certainly, we have problems, our economy is in shambles and
corruption - although not as bad or blatant as you pictured it -
does exist. I, and other thinking Nigerians do not condone this
but look at our pluses. In the 23 years since independence and 14
years since the end of a disastrous civil war, the military
government voluntarily turned over the reins to a freely elected
civilian government. Despite glaring, generally partisan electoral
malpractices which I am, by no means, glossing over, we can still
make some claim to be the largest democracy in Africa with a multi-
party system. Unlike some other countries in the third world,
Nigeria will never have a "Life President". We have a Press that
is constitutionally as free as any. In the past 8 years, we have
dramatically improved our highway system, enlarged and modernised
our ports, expanded our telephone network five fold, expanded our
power system four fold, built three refineries and are well on our
way towards establishment of our own steel industry and
industrialisation. Most of these have been done haphazardly, but
some progress has been made. Yes, several projects have been
mismanaged; yes, we have spent more than needed on other projects
and yes, some projects may have been unnecessary but wasn't the
same true in the United States not only during the industrial
expansion after your own civil war but even now with the multi-
billion dollar defence expenditure, which merely go to worsen the
U.S. budget deficit from one year to the other to the detriment of
the entire world financial structure? We recognise our excesses,
which were really excesses of a handful of people, to whom the good
name of Nigeria does not appear to mean much, and who, at the
appropriate time, will be dealt with, by the Grace of God.
The sad thing, however, is that their expatriate accomplices
always get away scot-free with their loot. We do not excuse them
and in time these will be corrected but we also recognize our
accomplishments and have every reason to hold our heads high.
END
_____________________________________________________________________
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Kunle
as
president of Nigeria. Someone said I was talking rubbish. I sincerely
hope
those still saying he (Abiola) was not forced to "step down" will start
to
open their minds with more information like this coming in.
Thanks, Mr. Oyedeji, for posting this.
Kunle Adegboye.
Marta Wiliams
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