GOCOP reflect the conduct of narcissists – persons who inveigh against elites and trample on the weak and sincere to get their way. Nothing in our conduct, set up or approach to the issues at stake including our press release warranted such an undignified attack.
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Lai Mohammed
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In issuing the broadside on the
reportage of a ‘meeting’ between the Honourable Minister of Information,
Alhaji Lai Mohammed and ‘Online Publishers in Nigeria’, we
appropriately responded to a “brand and trademark” issue; one that
bothered on the use of the name “online publishers association” we have
consistently defended.
Trite as it may seem, it is well to
establish that the Online Publishers Association of Nigeria (OPAN) is
all about defining and confronting critical, big picture issues that its
members face when creating original digital content experiences for
consumers and marketers.
OPAN is not a peer-group or a union but a
dedicated entity comprising of stakeholders whose ideas, vision and
focus is invested in establishing a self-regulated industry of
stakeholders involved in digital publishing and best practices across
the value chain, which includes journalism.
The press release however by GOCOP, an
‘association of online journalists’, titled “disregard charlatans,
blackmailers posing as online publishers” and with a content designed to
invoke character assassination - dripping with misrepresentations,
inaccuracies, unsubstantiated allegations and personal attacks has
elicited spontaneous concern and outrage from discerning publics – yet
represents just another hurdle in what unfortunately appears to be a
phantom, low-simmering civil war for the soul of online publishing in
Nigeria.
That is not the case. This not what we
do, who we are and most certainly, not what we are about. OPAN welcomes
the creation of clusters and groupings including GOCOP who affirms their
aims as “promoting a reading culture, inculcating of moral/ethics of
the profession and publication of events, peoples and cultures”; a
notion we are not remotely opposed to and should be complementary to our
objective.
At an institutional level therefore, we
recognize that a public response is necessary to address the
‘scapegoating and public-baiting’ in GOCOP’s blowback; one that needs to
be debunked and properly deconstructed.
To the discerning publics and
stakeholders therefore, we offer two clear positions – an issue-based
response on what is at stake and a public clarification and denunciation
of the release.
What is at Stake?
The key issue beyond the diatribe over
the years was how does Nigeria respond to the current positive disruptor
that empowers and expands the boundaries of publishing, not as a fad
but as a feature of social interactions permanently? How do we deliver
ethical publishing in a way that it balances and protects freedoms and
“free expression” without compromising “compliance with journalistic
ethos and extant laws”?
It was this concern that propelled an
intellectually diverse group of individuals in 2010 to go beyond the
moment and understand trends in practice and convergence where we can
get to a point of self-regulation based on best practice rules and
practices. This grouping recognized the limitations of narrow
affiliations, primordial sentiments and age-old approach to turf
protection in setting up OPAN with individuals and entities that
approximated its goal and guided its work between 2010 and 2015.
Our remit was never limited therefore to
the base relationship of a new genre of journalism in its isolated
sense but went further to link the stakeholders of this new order under a
platform to help the country make the transition from a disruptor phase
to an industry phase; leveraging on best practices our collaborations
with and learning exposure to other climes provided.
OPAN therefore has conducted itself, in a
measured manner, with heavy sacrifices from all concerned in its public
engagements and funding over the years culminating in its launch in Q4
2015 at a time it felt both the research and reality where in-synch with
its objectives; and this was evidenced by the groupings it invited for
its launch.
OPAN has ramped up activities with
engagements with the Nigerian Senate on the ‘frivolous petitions bill’
where it had a constructive meeting with the Senate President; initiated
a court process on the same matter; commissioned a paper to be
presented at the public hearing on the bill; written to the Federal
Board of Inland Revenue for guidance on tax compliance for online
publishers; agreed partnerships for digital publishing business
trainings for members; and now look forward to an engagement with the
Honourable Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation
next month to present its case for a review of the laws as it relates to
online publishing. This is what we are about.
The Specific Allegations Made
While it is not our wish to engage in
unnecessary verbal altercations, a couple of themes were prominent in
the GOCOP pushback against our release that requires setting the records
straight.
OPAN as another group of online journalists
This could not be further from the fact.
First, OPAN was mooted in 2010 (not 2001) and got its certificate of
incorporation on November 14, 2011. There was no hurry to launch or
engage and the association was self-funded as annual returns filed to
date will show.
While it was not entirely about
journalists, a low hanging fruit in an open market place where
censorship was not an option (for bloggers and self-publishers) was to
create awareness through research findings just as it was important, to
sell benefits of membership as being beyond access to patronage – public
and private.
In 2012, we received a group in our temporary secretariat and welcomed them, sharing our thoughts on what is possible including the four key issues we identified as being critical and needed to be addressed: viz:1. The absence of laws that provided a basis for an online publishing industry business model in Nigeria beyond that which merely recognized the print media (who equally had an online presence as a matter of modern reality and business economics) in our laws but one extended to all genres (present and future) to enable genres to earn legitimately and on an equal footing;2. The need to balance this changes with extant laws that provided the basis for proper accountability of practitioners in this new model of social interaction and engagement as it relates to responsibilities, obligations, inter-connected liabilities and standards/ethical conduct;3. The necessary framework for linking the digital / online publishers in Nigeria with the global dynamics of a digital generation – including publishers of original content, platform owners, technology firms, value-added service providers, OEM’s, solution providers, marketing practitioners, information aggregators, value added partners like Google, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc; domain name providers, server providers, cloud technology providers, venture capitalist, private equity investors, banks etc; and4. The deliberate promotion of niche information providers (select publishers in security, military, community policing, healthcare, education, aviation, infrastructure, social services, etc) that can help aggregate the linkage between information, technology and social development which emerging countries can rely on as it builds institutions for social change.
We stated that for a proper digital
publishing industry to thrive; it must embrace stakeholders as mentioned
in (3) above. Most importantly, we recognized the need for a review of
the extant laws in the country that will provide the basis for online
publishing to thrive. We equally informed the group that the news and
information service industry as we used to know it will forever be
altered and no-one can control the right to and use of information like
it existed before; but we can learn from how others have managed this
transition.
During this meeting, we proposed that
the benchmark OPA UK, who because of its legal and business history with
Nigeria offered us a learning curve and they had all the tools we
needed. We also informed the team that they can additionally confer on
qualified Nigerians an international status if we become an affiliate
body for which we have to pay the sum of $68,000 equivalent of fees.
The meeting rose with this group asking for time to consult on all they
heard and revert back. This never happened but is now misrepresented as a
demand. How disingenuous!
Sometime in 2013, the two individuals
who visited were acknowledged in a news report as members of a new group
known as Nigerian Online Publishers Association (NOPA) who had just
done a launch. Our lawyers, Law works & Partners who brought this to
our attention raised concerns with the similarity in names and OPAN
gave instructions to the firm to write formally to the Corporate Affairs
Commission (CAC) in October 2013 to clarify how similar names could be
so registered; and to seek a resolution. NOPA was duly copied and
notified of our concerns formally.
The CAC responded, in December 2013,
that it made an ‘error’ in registering same and asked that the names
submitted for registration is changed. This eventually happened in 2014
and we have never had any other issue with NOPA (now GOCOP).
As to GOCOP’s spurious allegation about
the role, interference and possible influence of the CAC by persons
other than OPAN, we call on the CAC as an institution to defend their
institutional integrity, process and compliance rules. We have issued a
formal letter to the CAC on this allegation to govern accordingly.
Orchestrated campaign against Femi Adesina, SA Media to the President
GOCOP stated that Femi Adesina is an
integral part of the association, something we agree he is naturally
entitled to given that this happened long before he was appointed into
office. We have no issues with professionals playing a mentoring and
guiding role in areas of interest.
It however remains a matter of personal
discretion for Femi Adesina to decide on the perception of a potential
conflict of interest and roles in the discharge of his current national
responsibility as the custodian of the office of the special assistant,
media & publicity to the President of the Federal Republic of
Nigeria.
We continue to relate with and accord
him the respect he deserves from all as a former President of the Guild
of Editors, former Managing Editor of a popular title to which our
member had the privilege of co-publishing with for two years and in his
current role, representing us all.
This was the same approach we adopted in
the case of Reuben Abati as a trustee of OPAN where we took conscious
steps to acknowledge and reflect in our arms-length dealings leading up
to our eventual launch in November 2015, long after he had left office
and when we now had a critical mass to make changes a larger grouping
required. We have no record of any engagement or involvement during his
tenure.
We hold no position against Femi
Adesina’s and indeed believe that professional groups should make the
best use of experienced members as best as they can; subject to best
ethos of corporate governance.
It is counter-productive to suggest any
other inference from our release as the blowback would have the public
believe. This is not an informed position on their part about the
enormous challenges confronting Femi Adesina in the discharge of his
responsibilities where he has his work cut out for him and needs to work
with all stakeholders.
Personal Attacks
As regards the personal attacks,
regurgitation of falsehoods from platforms that signpost all that is
wrong with the current online journalism genre as to real and imagined
members of OPAN; we wish to state that our membership does not fit the
caricature painted by GOCOP.
OPAN wishes to state that individuals
and members maligned are encouraged to take all legal steps to seek
redress from these unproven allegations, which falls below the standard
of sound journalism. The idea of scapegoating the institution by
membership is nothing but an appeal to sentiments and an attempt to
create an us-them dichotomy, a red herring at best.
We consider this grave and
unsubstantiated allegations irresponsible and unbecoming of
professionals to make without facts or evidence which is one of the
major concerns of the Nigerian public subjected to poor journalistic
practices premised on cyber bullying, intimidation and reputation
smearing which in 2016, reflects that we still have a lot of work to do
to improve standards of engagement and building trust with the public.
GOCOP provides justification for those who seek to stifle free use of
the digital space with such conduct as seen in recent steps to muzzle
the digital space by a legislator.
The Threat
GOCOP issued an open threat: “We do not
intend going beyond this for now as documents in our possession will be
made available to the public on the atrocities of these charlatans if
they push their luck any further.” This “intimidation and resort to
power flexing” does not represent best practice as we know it.
Our basic argument about actions like
this is simple and unassailable: they reflect the conduct of narcissists
– persons who inveigh against elites and trample on the weak and
sincere to get their way. Nothing in our conduct, set up or approach to
the issues at stake including our press release warranted such an
undignified attack.
We will put this down to the exuberance
of a few and we call on GOCOP to refocus on their aims and the state of
practice to see how the current disconnect affects sound business models
that includes public perception, reputation and positioning of the
online publishing industry as well as that of an otherwise marginalized
group of people – journalists of all genres; who they seek to serve.
Recall that in our public position to
the Nigerian Senate, we surmised that: If the Senate is really
interested in providing national interest governance over the use of the
internet or electronic communication, as indicated in Sections 3 and 4
of the proposed Bill (bearing in mind the cybercrimes bill of 2014),
there are other areas of intervention that can be in public interest
such as ensuring that online publishers enjoy the same business
opportunities open to print media (publication of audited accounts,
change of name, public notices and other legal publishing requirements),
address gaps in our laws relating to copyright/intellectual property,
anonymity/pseudonymity regulation, editorial rules compliance,
obscenity, privacy, child and sex pornography, pedophilia, cyber
bullying, threats, online harassment, competition rules etc.
Perpetuating the old order of pushing
the terror of the pen as was done in the past cannot work and will not
be a way to manage the enormous challenges facing Nigeria (and the
Nigerian media and publishing industry), where we now have a unique
opportunity for online platforms to offer ‘quick wins’ as one of the
sectors of growth.
Conclusion
We encourage the public, some of whom
have been victims of narcissist type encounters with online publications
to rest in the belief that a new dawn will emerge from all this where
laws that aggregates this new social order with the laws of the land
will berth a new industry devoid of such releases. We believe there is a
space for group learning for all involved in this ‘disruptor phase’ and
it will be won at the level of ideas unfettered from patronage and
motives.
We re-iterate our position that the
generic use of the word “Online Publishers Association in Nigeria” is a
trademark and corporate identity issue for which we are invested in and
will continually defend. What GOCOP and other similar interest groups
can do is to focus on building trust and value with the public to help
us all align reality with the law such that concrete steps are taken to
recognize the role, place and value of online publishing in our extant
laws.
OPAN is benchmarked against Online
Publishers internationally where online publishing has since expanded
both its scope, objective, membership and terminology to embrace the new
age thinking on digital publishing. Let the records therefore reflect
that no comparison with, or ambiguity about what OPAN stands for exists.
Thank you.
President, OPAN
W: www.onlinepublishersng.com E: opan@onlinepublishersng.com
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