Reporting News and opinions
There is an old legal maxim that justice must not only be done, but must also be seen to be done. Somewhere between Osadebe Avenue and King’s Square, however, that venerable principle was evidently fed into a shredder, doused in kerosene, and traded for prime-time television ratings.
At the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British government imposed restrictions on the direct broadcast of the voices of leading members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and associated organisations. Most notably, the BBC and other broadcasters were prohibited from airing the voices of figures such as Gerry Adams, then president of Sinn Féin, which was widely regarded as the political wing of the IRA. Television stations resorted to using actors’ voices to relay statements instead.
The BBC reviewed results from more than 6,000 polling stations in Rivers State. Its investigation found that the polling-unit figures it could obtain suggested that Obi had won the state by a substantial margin. The BBC also reported that Tinubu’s official declared total was more than 106,000 votes higher than its polling-station tally, while Obi’s official figure was more than 50,000 lower.
To outlast a prime minister always counts as some kind of achievement for an opposition leader, although Kemi Badenoch cannot claim credit for Sir Keir Starmer’s downfall. Sir Keir’s wounds were mostly self-inflicted. To the extent that opposition pressure was involved, it was electoral threats from Reform UK and the Green party that stoked Labour party frustration to a regicidal pitch. The Tory leader’s role was largely as a spectator.
A state begins to lose its authority when the law is formidable when dealing with the powerless but negotiable when dealing with the politically connected. Nigeria is increasingly flirting with precisely that danger.
