This memo to traditional media gatekeepers is about a dangerous phenomenon slowly transforming into a big business called impersonation. The Nigerian media have yet to pay an urgent attention to the phenomenon. This conversation is both urgent and necessary, even the issue and its consequences are within the control of media gatekeepers. Instead, the media have do far abdicated its responsibility to the judiciary. hey have somehow been abandoned to the judiciary to manage. It is important for media managers to talk about it because this local “business reflects current t international concerns about alternative truths in the media.
This intervention sketches a preliminary understanding and grave implications of this growing phenomenon. It also establishes clearly why the media should not abdicate the responsibility to deal with it. Specific suggestions on how to manage the negative impact of this phenomenon on the body politic will however be deferred. Here we go:
Ever in search of get-rich-quick schemes, unscrupulous citizens have formalized impersonation into another get rich quick business. a business and are making a killing out of it. The business has become a lucrative fraud in the politics sector. Thus far, it is thriving because of the civil rights halo around it – the perception that everyone who has an alternative truth to sell shall not be prevented from hawking same in the media. Publicity happens to be the oxygen that the business needs to thrive. The media provide this nourishment on a continuing basis, until people and organisations being harmed by the business take the matter to court in search of protection.
The impostor business is age old, practiced by men and women imbued with a dubious character and suffering from economic survival anxiety. Most of us begin life with a survival anxiety and seek solutions from either ends of the moral spectrum. Life is mostly a struggle to overcome the economic survival anxiety suppressed in battlefield by the application of character and diligence, with a little bit of luck. While most fortitude to manage the tears and blood that lead to business survival, impostors however prefer the easy route to “success.”
In politics, impersonation used to be a seasonal business that booms during election cycles. It has now been refined and sold to political godfathers who fund this lucrative habit for the operators. The new improved product the sell for the godfathers is what I refer to as political impersonation, for want of a better way to define it.
We hitherto conceived of political impersonation in two ways, legal and illegal. Impersonation generally is a crime with strict legal sanctions. However, on the lips of comedic actors, it is a legitimate outlet to let off steam. In other words, the business could be legal or illegal. It is legal when comedians and ordinary folks employ the tool of political impersonation to roast politicians and VIPs, we enjoy a good laugh. Outside this, police arrest and prosecute those who engage in impersonation to embarrass, defraud and harm others. We recently glimpsed a bit of this when UK immigration officials embarrassed Mr. Peter Obi at Heathrow Airport in London. A unnamed political impersonator apparently beat British immigration to slip into London where he may have carried out negative actions that have yet to come to light. When the real Obi showed up, he was led aside and interrogated.
Unlike comedic actors who make us happy, political impersonators distribute tears and sorrow wherever they go. Yet, they proudly and boldly flaunt their new found unearned wealth from the business. They are making impersonation lose its negative connotation. Impersonators however remain who they are – those who deceive the people with alternative truths they hawk in the public sphere for fraudulent gains. The strange thing is that owner-managers of this business do not believe that they commit fraud. Some boldly approach the court to obtain an imprimatur for their trade – against the very people and organisations that they set out to embarrass and harm!
Political impersonation therefore operates in a twilight zone located at an intersection between comedy and 419, leaving us citizens torn between crying and laughing at their shenanigans. What is strange is that although this “business” tilts more towards 419 than comedy, it is now seemingly promoted as a civil right, the right to speak one’s own truth. This is why, unlike what happens in the underworld of one-chance and 419, the media appear to humour political impersonation and allow it to filter through editorial gatekeeping. Media managers tolerate and inadvertently promote the business of political impersonation, knowing full well that it is powered by unscrupulous, desperate power mongers.
Here are two cases that dramatize the extremes of seriousness and hilarity in this new improved phenomenon.
The first is that of a young man, an Igbo. For years, this fellow successfully managed his one-man business set up to promote unlicensed alternative truths for Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide. He frequently fired off press releases and exploited media cycles to speak for the sociocultural association on issues of national concern, posing as Ohanaeze spokesperson. Regrettably, his business created rather than solved problems for the Igbo and embarrassed Ohanaeze to no end. He neither attended Ohanaeze meetings nor issued statements that reflected what Ohanaeze stood for. Despite downing him in several press statements, the upstart continued to be hugged by media gatekeepers who propped up his business with consistent publicity. Ohanaeze eventually got fed up with trying to convince the media about the impostor and took the matter to court. Following a court-ordered restraint, he simply disappeared underground, from where he has continued to ply his media-aided trade.
A second example is of an old man, a Yoruba. This fellow equally set up shop to promote his brand of alternative truth for a political party currently contesting the results of the 2023 general elections. After several failed attempts by the party to disown him, the case also went to court where he was restrained from continuing with his embarrassment and harm. The other day, this political entrepreneur dragged an unnamed Senior Advocate with him to an election tribunal where his name did not appear as a party to the case. Jurists were offended that the lawyer may not have considered that seniority in the bar comes with responsibility to promote ethical decision making in the legal profession. This is precisely the point that senior journalists should note because, although there is now a court-ordered restraint, the old man’s business will not die unless traditional media gatekeepers deny him the life-giving oxygen of media publicity.
Traditional media publicity – from television, radio and print media, in that order – is the lifeblood of the political impersonation business. The impersonator exploits a media loophole that CNN’s Christine Amanpour recently identified as othersidedness. Combined with the ever present economic survival anxiety aided by disappearing audiences, traditional media managers appear unwilling to halt the worldwide surge from the forces of alternative truth threatening to overrun the political landscape of truth and reason. I imagine that in journalism classrooms, teachers are once more returning to the traditional precept of what the public wants versus what they need in media content.
My worry, as the two cases above exemplify, is that the media left the job to the judiciary whose decisions in each case drew public applause. It is a good thing what the judiciary did but the worry is that these judicial decisions are neither enforceable nor sustainable, for two main reasons. In the first, the businesses will not die as long as they continue to receive their life blood from the media. Secondly, senior advocates and struggling lawyers alike may take a clue from the Lagos upstart and realize that they can increase their earning power from the sponsors of the political impersonator. It is a common assumption, right or wrong, that politicians prosecute their election cases and sponsor political impersonation with funds they pinch from the public till.
At the end of the day, media gatekeepers will continue to be fed with crumbs to sustain the business of sustaining the fat purses of impersonators and lawyers, deriving from stolen funds. This is why, considering that the oxygen of political impersonation is sustained media coverage, media editors may consider engaging in a robust conversation on the new and growing phenomenon. There are practical ways to deal with the issue but this will be a matter for another day.
•Anikwe, former News Editor of The Guardian and Editor of Daily Times, publishes Enugu Metro, the community online news and local resource portal for Coal City residents and visitors