Editorials Opinion and Analysis
Lies, politics and Nigeria's great rumour mill
Source: BBC December 2009
Nigerian journalist Sola Odunfa contemplates the invisible and unimaginable creativity of Nigeria's giant rumour mill, as part of our series of viewpoints from African writers.
There is only one industry I know in Nigeria which is completely immune to the vagaries of the national economy and the well-oiled machine of the government security and intelligence services.
It is big, it is strong, it never sleeps and it is unimaginably creative - but it is invisible.
I am talking of the Nigerian rumour mill.
Radio Nigeria describes itself as Africa's biggest news network - yet it is puny compared to the awesome rumour mill.
While the conventional, licensed media have to contend with laws and regulations and interests and finance, the Nigerian rumour mill is a wild industry which respects no conventions or authority or checks.
The butt of rumours
The rumour mill has no source. It simply exists with an arrogance drawn from its invisibility.
One day in 1989 Nigerians woke up to the news that one-time ceremonial President Nnamdi Azikiwe was dead.
Everybody who had ears heard it simultaneously across the country.
Dr Azikiwe himself read his own obituary! Subsequently the old man lived several years before reaching his bus stop.
Politicians are not the only butt of the rumour mill, and its scope may not always be national.
Who will question?
There are localised rumours - in small communities, in social clubs, in religious organisations.
They come with such authority that hardly anyone doubts them.
Who will question the veracity of a story that an old or sick person has died? Or that a person whose source of wealth is unknown is indeed a drug baron? Or that a curvaceous Nollywood star is mistress to several adulterous men?
The mill in Nigeria is so powerful that it has permeated the conventional media.
Many newspapers and magazines publish products of the rumour mill as authentic news.
The less dishonourable of them publish retractions in obscure corners several days later.
The one factor binding all rumours is that they are fabricated to injure individuals or organisations.
They damage reputations and cause disaffection among people.
The Nigerian rumour mill gained ascendancy during the long period of military rule when the news media was castrated.
Information circulation went back to the old days of mouth-to-mouth communication.
Opposition newspapers were persecuted and, therefore, their journalists went underground.
'Street talk'
Since then many Nigerians, including the most educated, have relied on 'street talk' for what they regard as authentic information.
Today Nigerians say that genuine official information is forced out by the rumour mill.
Poor Maryam Babangida.
The elegant and once powerful former First Lady was on her sick bed in the US last month when the rumour mill back home published her obituary. It was on the world wide web pronto!
Pray never to be in the shoes of her husband General Ibrahim Babangida.
Nigerians simply love to hate the man. They would do - or say - anything to hurt him.
For health reasons
That story had just been suppressed when I received calls last week from some of my friends abroad requesting me to confirm that President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua had died far away in Jeddah.
The callers were not frivolous persons but they sounded disappointed that I said, firstly, that I could not confirm and, secondly, that I did not believe the so-called news.
Popular reaction at home since the story was officially denied was that, to put it mildly, the burden of governing Nigeria should devolve only on a visibly healthy person.
Nigerians sympathise with him over his health condition as a human being but some of the more vocal are now openly calling for his resignation or removal for health reasons.
'Everything is OK, Jack'
As we say here, no rumour is built on vacuum.
Nigerians got to know officially that their president was ill only after wide publication of rumours - twice.
The latest was the third death rumour on the president and it succeeded in eliciting official information that the devoutly religious man had not gone to perform the Hajj but was indeed rushed to Saudi Arabia for urgent medical treatment.
No journalist worth the description should subscribe to the rumour mill and I try not to, but the Nigerian environment is different.
We have been watching the president on TV for three years and noticing the progressive change in his colour.
In our view he is neither becoming more handsome nor healthier, yet we are told: "Everything is OK, Jack."
If the rumour mill went to sleep there would be no communication whatsoever between the ruling establishment and the people.
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