Newspapers Report on Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The primary aim of this study will be to review the Newspaper reports on Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho. Thus, the following objectives;
- To determine the extent to which these newspapers report on Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho.
- To investigate thefrequency of newspaper report of Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho.
- To determine the effects of these reports on the image of these men.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE TWO
Nigeria, and not the accused persons, is currently in the dock in the ongoing trials of Sunday Adeyemo (Igboho) and Nnamdi Kanu in Cotonou, Republic of Benin and Abuja, Nigeria respectively.
The 54-year-old Nnamdi Kanu and 49-year-old Igboho, who were little known, have suddenly become heroes of their people and of the free world, wearing garlands the Buhari administration has tactlessly adorned them with. Not the lacklustre performance of his administration, but the way Buhari has handled the fundamental issue of the security of life and property of Nigerians, which gave birth to Kanu and Igboho, will be the dominant yardstick with which this era will receive the cruel judgement of history.
The legislature, the Presidency, and even the judiciary are in the eyes of the world. In these their two exceptional sons, Buhari has put both the Yoruba and Igbo nations in detention, manacled for trial for the expression of their conscience that even if the Buhari government lacks the capacity to better their lots, he should at least let them live. For daring to even cry when unjustly chastised, two of the largest component nations of Nigeria deserve the jackboot.
The Executive fumbled in several respects. First, is the illegal and thoughtless acts of preventing some members of the public, including ridiculously barring some media organizations from covering the trial. Unknown to it, every step by the Federal Government to present Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho as criminals have made them heroes of their people in the face of government’s feigned helplessness in curbing the menace of the Fulani ethnic terrorist militia who ride roughshod and unchecked on the lives of members of other nationalities.
This is a political trial simpliciter and the Federal Government must face its consequences squarely. For Kanu, the Constitution and our criminal justice system presume him innocent and cast the burden of proving its guilt beyond a reasonable doubt on the prosecuting Federal Government. In this proceeding, the Federal Government is participes criminis or at best an agent provocateur. The non-production of Kanu, blamed on logistics problems, is suspect. The prosecution is not just only being aware of the date and importance of this trial.
Apart from the Ikemba and Eze Igbo Gburugburu, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, no other Nigerian has pulled such cult followership among the Igbo as Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Though a Lion by university attendance as those of us who have the privilege of passing through the University of Nigeria Nsukka are proudly called, Nnamdi is not the devouring lion as the government of Nigeria seems to present him. He is an apostle of Mahatma Gandhi School of nonviolence resistance to State evil and was merely a director of London-based Radio Biafra under the leadership of Mazi Ralph Uwazuruike who also is a peaceful agitator and founder of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB.
Even when he broke out, to create the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra in 2014, little was known of Kanu as the more democratic government of President Goodluck Jonathan, was undisturbed by Kanu’s right to nonviolent ventilation of his views no matter the size of the crowd pulled in the process. At the inception of the Buhari administration, even without any evidence of violence, the government detained Kanu without trial from October 2015 for over a year despite court orders for his release. By 2017, in the bid to neutralise him, his house was attacked through unpretentious military operations which led to the deaths of scores of members of IPOB.
If Kanu had stayed in Nigeria playing folk hero, the 54-year-old Nigerian/British citizen would probably have fallen under the bullets for trying to resist arrest. Or being addressed in the language he understood by refusing to continue to allow armed terrorist herdsmen to kill his people, destroy their farms, rape their sisters and mothers. The abduction of Kanu from Kenya which the Federal Attorney General celebrated gleefully, is only an albatross. In the full eyes of the world, Kanu is now a big fishbone in the throat of the Federal Government.
In the case of Igboho, he grew up to know the Fulani in his locality where they are not in negligible population, but carry on their cattle breeding business with respect for the culture and rules of their host communities, apart from intermarriages which have altered even the Fulani tongues. In cases of conflicts between the cattle rearing Bororo and the indigenous farmers, there were local mechanisms for amicable redress.
However, since the Buhari administration, the Fulani herdsmen have gone haywire inflicting rape, torture, and murder all over the country. An illustrious son of Igangan who came from the United States to establish a mechanized and integrated agricultural business that would benefit the youths of the area was hacked to death by some unschooled Fulani boys with the bravado of their leader. Even at that, Igboho didn’t kill; he only mobilised to drive the armed criminal gangs out of Yoruba land. It is for this that the Buhari regime seeks his life. The end of this war may not be predictable from the beginning.
When the Balewa government tried Chief Obafemi Awolowo, it thought the end had come for the Action Group Leader and his followers, the only one of which the convict still alive today is the irrepressible 93-year-old Leader of Afenifere, Chief Ayo Adebanjo.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
In this chapter, we will describe how the study will be carried out.
Research design
The method adopted in this study will be content analysis research design. Content analysis is a method of studying and analyzing communication in a systematic, objective and quantitative manner for the purpose of measuring variables (Wimmer and Dominick, 2003:141).
Population of the study
With the use of stratification, the newspapers were separated along the lines of ownership-those owned by the government and those that are privately-owned. Besides, only national newspapers were considered. Daily Trust will be the only government newspaper during the period under study; it will be constituted the selected sample. The Vanguard will be randomly selected (through a simple random technique) from the list of the privately- owned national newspapers The study will cover a period of five months ; from March-July 2021. It is hoped that the study will be a continuous one as to monitor the trend of the coverage of Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho cases by the Nigerian press.
A total of 193 items of the newspapers constituted the sample size. Through the use of simple random sampling.
Sampling procedure
The study sample will be drawn using the continuous weeks format. Giving that the study period was only five months (1st march to 31st July 2020), the use of continuous week allows us to sample all available Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho related stories published within the period. The continuous week format means that the coverage of the activities and cases of the two separatists will be examined for all seven days in each week to avoid skipping an important date in the coverage. This will yield a total of 193 items across the four newspapers. This will also serve as our sample size. Coding sheet (accompanied by a coding guide) will be developed to assess the presence or absence of the frames, with particular attention to news stories, editorials, features, opinions and pictures as units of analysis.
Reliability
The researcher initially used peers to check for consistence of results. The researcher also approached senior researchers in the field. The research supervisor played a pivotal role in ensuring that consistency of the results was enhanced. The instrument was also pilot tested. To ensure reliability of the coding instrument, Holsti’s27 inter-coder reliability formula was adopted to obtain 80% agreement between two independent coders who coded 32 editions (8 each) of the selected newspapers for the pre-test.
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