Gbewudani and the grammar of contempt - Punch Newspapers

On Thursday, September 3, 2026, during the “what’s trending” segment of Arise TV’s The Morning Show, Rufai Oseni called the Peoples Democratic Party’s presidential standard-bearer, Senator Sandy Onor, “gbewudani,” a term loosely translated as a stooge or lapdog. The following day, Lere Olayinka, Senior Special Assistant on Public Communications and Social Media to FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, appeared on the same programme to field questions on the inclusion of former minister Betta Edu in the 2027 presidential campaign council. When Oseni put the question to him, Olayinka refused to answer, citing the previous day’s remark and insisting he wished to engage only with “reasonable human beings”. It took Ayo Mairo-Ese perhaps 15 seconds to do what a whole profession is meant to know instinctively: remind a guest that a three-anchor programme cannot be renegotiated down to the anchor he prefers. Olayinka held his ground. Mairo-Ese ended the interview. Most viewers probably forgot it by the next segment, and the clip that circulated afterwards focused, predictably, on the stand-off rather than the remark that had provoked it a day earlier. They shouldn’t have looked away so quickly. That 15 seconds contained, in miniature, a question Nigerian journalism has been avoiding for years: what happens when the people entrusted with separating fact from rumour stop bothering to separate criticism from insult? And what does it say about the state of our public conversation that the correction, when it came, drew far less attention than the offence it was correcting? I appreciate that intervention precisely because it was unglamorous, because it required no theatrics to keep a live broadcast from unravelling further. Those who occupy the journalistic space possess an unusual kind of power: they can shape reputations, frame public conversations and, at times, determine which version of an event becomes accepted as truth. That power demands a corresponding measure of restraint, and Rufai Oseni, an experienced and often incisive broadcaster, should know better than to be so professionally careless as to attach a label like “gbewudani” to a public figure on his own programme, and then appear startled when the label becomes the story that follows him into the next day’s broadcast. There is a distinction between robust criticism and gratuitous abuse, just as there is a profound difference between an opinion, an allegation and an established fact. That distinction is the whole argument, so it is worth stating once, precisely. A journalist is entitled to strong opinions; a columnist or broadcaster with no intellectual position on the matters he discusses is unlikely to produce anything memorable. But conviction does not dissolve the obligation to separate what one knows from what one suspects, and what one can prove from what one only believes. A commentator may argue that a politician has behaved recklessly or that an institution has failed. To call a man a criminal, or brand him with a term designed to humiliate rather than describe, is to move beyond colourful criticism into territory that demands evidence. The fact that the words are spoken on live television, rather than printed in a column, does not lower that standard. It arguably raises it, since television offers no opportunity to reconsider a sentence before it reaches the public. During my master’s training in Media and Communication at the University of Strathclyde in the United Kingdom, one of the texts we encountered in our study of journalism ethics was Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel’s The Elements of Journalism. Its formulation of journalism as “a discipline of verification” has stayed with me because it captures something fundamental about the profession. Verification does not require journalists to be bloodless creatures incapable of judgment; it is the professional discipline that separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda and mere assertion. That distinction is worth preserving on Nigerian television, where it has been eroding for some time. A journalist may interpret facts, interrogate them, connect them and challenge the people involved. But facts themselves cannot be summoned into existence by force of personality, however commanding that personality happens to be on camera. There is a further problem worth naming. What happens when the journalist becomes the story. Journalism is meant to illuminate an issue and help citizens understand what is happening around them. When a presenter’s temperament begins to eclipse the subject under discussion, the centre of gravity shifts, and the audience stops watching the issue and starts watching the performance instead. This is particularly dangerous on television, where confidence is easily mistaken for credibility and volume for authority. The camera magnifies personality; it does not manufacture proof. Neither does celebrity, seniority, a large audience or the prestige of the platform. The more influential the journalist becomes, the more rigorous the discipline surrounding that influence ought to be, not the less. None of this should be reduced to whether one likes Rufai or Olayinka or agrees with either man’s politics. Personal loyalties are beside the point. The real question is what standard we expect of people entrusted with considerable influence over public discourse. A watchdog cannot credibly insist that everyone else answer for their conduct while treating its own as beyond examination. Media urged to avoid stigma in GBV, health reports Obi clarifies ‘ready to die’ comment, says it was symbolic 2027 election: Peter Obi plans dual result transmission There is, equally, a difference between fearless journalism and combative journalism, and Nigerian broadcasting has begun to confuse the two. Fearlessness means asking difficult questions, confronting powerful people, refusing to be intimidated by status. Combative journalism can become addicted to confrontation for its own sake. The former serves the public; the latter serves the ego of the practitioner. A journalist does not become more courageous because he is louder, nor more independent because he is insulting. Sometimes the most formidable journalistic intervention is not the one that produces the greatest noise, but the one that leaves a subject with nowhere to hide, because the questions are precise and the evidence is unimpeachable. Shouting a man down is easy, and it plays well in a thirty-second clip built for reposting. Building a case against him, fact by verifiable fact (like Mehdi Hassan), is the harder and more consequential craft, the one that survives scrutiny after the cameras are off, and it is precisely the one Nigerian television increasingly rewards least. Professional restraint should not be mistaken for timidity. There is nothing timid about telling the truth carefully, and nothing cowardly about withholding an allegation one cannot substantiate. There is considerable intellectual discipline in saying, “I do not know,” or “this is my interpretation, not a fact.” In an environment already saturated with rumour and algorithmically amplified certainty, that restraint is not weakness. It is professional strength, and it is in short supply. Being a media practitioner is not a licence to call people unprintable names, just as the freedom to criticise does not confer the freedom to defame. The press must remain free to scrutinise government, interrogate politicians and expose institutional failure. But press freedom is not a personal entitlement to impunity. It is a public trust, and its legitimacy depends substantially on how responsibly that trust is exercised, on air, in print and in the increasingly blurred space between the two. Nigeria needs a media powerful enough to confront power but disciplined enough not to become power-drunk itself. We need journalists who can interrogate a minister without becoming propagandists, challenge a billionaire without becoming a demagogue, and disagree with a public figure without reducing journalism to personal combat. The profession’s credibility is not secured just by defending journalists when they are threatened. It is secured, just as importantly, by holding them to the standard their freedom is supposed to justify. The media’s authority ultimately rests on trust, and trust of this kind is built slowly, through accuracy, fairness, proportion and accountability. It can be squandered in a single broadcast, the moment the public begins to suspect that a journalist cares more about winning a quarrel than establishing the truth. If journalists expect society to protect the press because journalism is indispensable to democracy, they must also accept the discipline that protection was meant to purchase. The press must be free. But freedom without professional discipline is not courage. It is thuggery. The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or Facebook: Folorunso Fatai Adisa. Folorunso Adisa

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