EVOLUTION AND HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC PRESS IN NIGERIA, 1900-2019
Abstract
It is a general assumption among stakeholders in the Catholic Church that evolution and history of Catholic press in Nigeria have not gotten a deserved attention among media scholars. It is in response to this concern that this study examined a detailed account of press-related activities of the Catholic Church from 1900 to 2019 in order to establish ways Catholic publications contributed to journalism in Nigeria. Anchored on McLuhan’s theory of media evolution, qualitative research method was used. For data collection, in-depth interview was used. Findings showed the establishment of the first three newspapers and one magazine during the early newspaper period. During post-civil-war period, there was the review of condition of Catholic newspapers after the war. In this modern period, dioceses began establishing diocesan newspapers and professional associations emerged. The early period provided opportunities...
AN EXAMINATION OF THE PAIRED CATEGORIES OF PROPAGANDA IN THE LIGHT OF JACQUES ELLUL’S PROPAGANDA THEORY
Historical Background
The use of propaganda has been an integral
part of human history and we can trace its philosophical and theoretical
origins back to ancient Greece. Used effectively by Alexander the Great, the
Roman Empire, and the early Christians, propaganda became an integral part of
the religious conflicts of the Reformation (Ellul, 1967; Scribner, 1981;
Oettinger, 2001; McKinney, 2003; Martinson, 2001; Walton, 1997). In point of
fact, Martin Luther adopted the invention of the printing press in his fight
against the Catholic Church (Soergel, 1993; Wright, 2005; Watt, 1991; Bukofzer,
1960). The Catholic Church, in turn, not only used propaganda to propagate the
faith, but also to oppose Martin Luther. Both adversaries used songs as
instrument to spread their propagandas.
BETWEEN A NECESSARY CONFERENCE AND ULTIMATE TRUTH
The convergence of opinions has established the fact that we need a conference of Nigerians to review the way we live together. Two people living under the same roof surely have different ways: one always feels his way is better than the other. As a Catholic priest, I remember settling down recently to live with another priest; we had to convoke a meeting to ensure a life together without rancour. We talked about food. We ended up drawing up a timetable for meals having made useful and mutual concessions. I also remember going to meet my doctor to complain about my rising blood pressure. After a thorough examination, he recommended I should stay away from certain category of food. The first was pounded yam a staple where I come from. We eat pounded yam like we drink water: morning, afternoon, night – the leftover is not wasted either. Pounded yam is a food I have come to love through the years. Even though it was not easy staying away from it, I had to go out of my way to engender a greater good: improving my general wellbeing. We need no soothsayer to tell us there are things we ought to do right we have...
CATHOLICS DO NOT WORSHIP SATAN
Let somebody call Pastor
Christopher Okotie of the household of God Church to order. If not, he will set
the whole country on fire. His unguarded utterance during his preaching
sessions is put on the conveyor’s belt. It is going round and round. Prophet
T.B. Joshua was the first to snare Okotie’s baggage of poisoned dish. Now it is
the turn of the Catholic Church. No one knows whose turn it will be tomorrow. I
hope Okotie will not say something someday that will cause religious crisis in
Nigeria. Last Sunday smoke came forth from his nostril, fire from his mouth.
For him all Catholic members in the world are on the way to hell because they
worship Satan and are led by an anti-Christ Pope who is a friend to the Devil.
Okotie described the Catholic Church as a counterfeit Church, which Satan sets up and that Catholics bow to idols and crucify Jesus every Sunday when they eat bread claiming they are eating Jesus’ body. He believed Catholics are not Christians and they do not know Jesus. For him the Pope is an anti-Christ who does the job of the devil and very soon Catholic Church will pledge allegiance to the devil. By implication the Catholic Church is yet to pledge the allegiance. Okotie...
COMMUNICATION AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE CHURCH’S PASTORAL PLAN
Introduction
I thank the organisers of this seminar for considering me suitable as one of the resource persons. I went through the teaser they sent to me. I discovered that the catch phrases are: use and relationship. There are various reasons why people use the media, but the most prominent reason is to get gratification. As a religious body, the kind of gratification we want people to get sending messages or receiving messages from us is spiritual in nature. That is why any Catholic medium must promote evangelisation in the immediate environment and beyond. Any Catholic medium that does not promote the gospel message should not have been set up in the first place. This means the target audience of any Catholic medium, be it radio, television, newspaper, electronic and digital media, and personal relationship and encounter, should be the adherents of the Catholic faith. Every Catholic medium should aim to advance members of the Catholic Church. This does not mean that Catholic media cannot reach out to non-Catholics. They can and that is why they are created to advance evangelisation. We have to set these parameters right before going...
DARKNESS IN A CITY OF LIGHT
TWICE, I was in Onitsha, the sprawling city in the east of the Niger –
though in transit. Twice, I was scared stiff. On the first occasion, I was on
my way to Ilorin Park to board. The town-service bus we boarded led other
buses, cars, and motorcycles popularly called Okada in our colloquial parlance
– in a rather discordant file, each rushing to a safe haven. Traffic waded
through the same muddy road in both directions. Before we could pronounce
‘Jack,’ one Okada man and the woman at the back were inside the mud with the
bike over them. The two bellowed an awful cry, “Chim ooo.” People in the area
ran to lift the bike so they could be eased of the painful situation. This
quantum neglect of Onitsha city roads scared me stiff.
UNDERSTANDING FAKE NEWS: PERCEPTION OF JOURNALISTS ON THE MENACE OF MISINFORMATION IN NIGERIA
Abstract
Despite being a new term, ‘fake news’ has evolved rapidly. This paper argued that the term “fake news” should be reserved for cases of deliberate presentation of (typically) false or misleading claims as news, where these are misleading by design. The phrase ‘by design’ here refers to systemic features of the design of the sources and channels by which fake news propagates and, thereby, manipulates the audience’s cognitive processes. The study surveyed six media stations in Lagos metropolis with responses from 110 respondents who are journalists, 20 journalists from each station. The findings suggested that journalists aged between 18 and 44 are mostly affected by digitisation. This trend has changed the outlook of journalists in their relation to fake news. Nearly all agreed fake news affects our national life negatively especially aspects such as the integrity of online newspapers, the credibility of Internet users...
SELF- AWARENESS AND GLOBAL CYBER FRAUD IN THE LIGHT OF CYNTHIA OSOKOGU: A CASE STUDY OF LAGOS
Abstract
This paper studies the death of Cynthia Osokogu, killed by her facebook friends. Were the killers of Cynthia able to get her because of the information/contents they shared together? The disclosure reopens the debate as to whether shared contents among Internet users result in Cyber Fraud increase. Since the death of Cynthia took place in Lagos, this study adopts Lagos as a case study. How does this affect global integration and human solidarity? It argues that the death of Cynthia means a step backward for human solidarity since her killers obviously came together (Integration), oblivious to her, for purposes other than solidarity: a globalization of cyber criminals of sort. In their classic theory on inter-personal processes, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham explain how, through human self-awareness, people make inferences about information we receive from them and information we give them about ourselves. Even though we reveal who we are in the process, people withhold certain information from us and we play into the hands of those who converge for crime in the process. This theory called Johari Window situates why...
HUNCH OF THE EAR
The conversation is
on, courtesy of the fine lines the pope’s message on the World’s Communication
day established about the need to step back to embrace listening in a
fast-paced world. What about listening? How did listening influence people’s
behaviour before the advent of technology? What is the state of listening in
this technological age? Pope Francis made us to understand that listening is
very important in order to have a dialogue and good communication. It is very
important in order to cancel monologue and duologue in our conversations. He
told us how not to communicate. For him, eavesdropping and spying are the very
opposite of listening, therefore bad communication. This writer believes
listening fared better before the advent of technology both as ability and
skill.
Language was discovered more than 3,000 years ago. After its discovery, language became means of human exchange, interaction, cooperation and integration. With the discovery of language, human beings have to develop the ability to hear. Then the acoustic or tribal age took off. This age preceded the age of literacy and advent of technology. Of all the six senses, therefore, human beings...
ON SERVICE DELIVERY AND BUREAUCRACY
After all the effort
to get the necessary document failed, the other priest and I counted our losses
over the journey; the money used to fuel our car from Bayelsa to Ibadan, and
shuttling from Ijebu-ode to Ibadan and back for four consecutive days, then,
the exhaustion, risk, and loss of time we could have put into other equally
important activities. Our persistence and self-advocacy notwithstanding, the
staff at the registrar’s office, University of Ibadan, put an imaginary
obstacle around service delivery in the name of institutional bureaucracy. I
can hear people say in hushed tone, “bureaucracy again?” Many who have heard
this word in school departments or have seen it pasted on certain office’ doors
have discovered it’s not merely a word or phrase, but a reality that people
have hated to experience.
People come into these departments for certain reasons. Some look for documents they know are under the purview of a particular department to give urgently and desperately. Some come for other less urgent services. Some come to read the people who make up such departments: their culture and institutional practices. They come as ombudsmen of sort. As for us, desperation to get...
ONLY TIME WILL TELL
Sometime last week, I watched a flick titled, “The Legend of Seeker.” The flick presents the search for three boxes of treasure with Richard, the seeker, as the main character. Richard is a character with a power of the multitude. He is so endowed with supernatural strength that he can take on many people at the same time and subdue them. He represents the arrowhead of a group that embarks on an adventure to wrestle the three boxes of treasure from another group – the latter group having diabolical tendencies. It is like the battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness to capture the soul of heaven – the three boxes of treasure being of heaven, or of precious value or a representation of the common good. So the seeker is locked in an endless struggle with the adversary until he achieves his mission. The difference between these opposing forces is while the seeker is driven by a desire, which is positive and representative of a certain collective will; the adversary’s desire is destructive, selfish and unrepresentative. In one of such battle scenes, the arrowhead of the adversary named Dianne, a woman of cunning and wicked character, almost to heartless and...
THE ROLE OF THE EDITOR IN EFFECTIVE FUNCTIONING OF CATHOLIC NEWSPAPERS
Abstract
This study focuses on the power relation in the media. The implication of this for the Catholic newspaper has introduced two models namely, the public relations and public interest models. Public relations model makes the bishop publisher the power driver of Catholic newspapers whose objectives are to promote the good image of the Church and primarily to propagate evangelization and spread Catholic faith. On the other hand, the public interest model removes power from the bishop and gives it to another power driver who might be the editor where the editor doubles as the owner of the newspaper. This power arrangement undermines the goal of Catholic communication and instead defends religious liberty for all. This means that while this system singles out no Church for criticism, none gets only favourable attention. In essence, it undermines the good image of the Catholic Church in particular since it exposes scandalous tendencies within the hierarchy....
VOTE FOR THE CROOK, IT IS IMPORTANT 2.0
Sociology teaches about group behaviour and the dynamics in society. So many years ago when human evolution was yet to advance, survival was the driver of action. Then people were inclined to do things that today’s people would easily perceive as barbaric. We know better now because we now live in an organised society. We live in a society that laws, regulations, statutes, and norms hold together. Society derides and condemns those who still express their actions through barbarism. They are derogated as deviants. Conformation to norms has become the best way to express one’s action. Conformation makes people invest in values. It helps people to love good ideals. It helps people to love their government and their country. Conformation helps people to come down from their individualistic heights to embrace communalistic instinct or fellow feeling, which Africans are known for in the world. It helps us to fortify this instinct. I am not, however, talking about conforming to draconian laws, but laws oriented to serve public good. Leaders of society who want conformation from their followers normally would model character that they want to see in their followers. They take the lead and drive the initiative. Societal expectations are very high. However, in a situation where leaders...
RELIGION AND ENFORCEMENT OF COVID-19 PROTOCOLS
I kind of liking the role of the government officials in both
Presidential task force (PTF) on COVID-19 and that of Nigerian Centre for
Disease Control (NCDC) levels to the secular/humanist attitude and value of the
18th century king of Prussia, Frederick the Great who lived
between 1740 and 1786. Prussia used to be a monarchic sovereignty in Europe
before French revolution, which successfully put an end to monarchy as a form
of government. This happened when enlightenment became the paradigm for
constructing society and rationality became the new normal for ordering society
politically as against the pre-eminence of theology in previous centuries.
Frederick as king often described his role as that of “first servant of the
state”. To him, his subjects’ religions were their own affair, a matter of
private conscience, and not a public matter of state. Frederick’s overriding
concern instead was with building an army and a stable bureaucracy, and putting
in place a tax structure to fund them.
For him, his...
HOMILY FOR THE EVE OF CHRISTMAS YEAR A 2022
Msgr I greet you. You will live
long. You will live well. Fr. Victor I greet you. You will live long. You will
live well. Dear people of God you will live long. You will live well. I will
live long too. I will live well as well. I bring you this eve of Christmas the
secret of living long and living well. Let me start the homily with this
interrogation. You hold a cup of coffee in your hand and somebody bumps into
you. Then a third party asked you, “Why did you spill the coffee?” What will be
your response? I know the kind of responses common in our parlance. “Are you
blind? Didn’t you see the person who bumped into me?” is possible. This is
however wrong. The right answer should be: I spilled the coffee because there is
coffee in the cup. Of course, the logic of the answer is in the question’s
doing word, coffee.
For instance, if the cup is filled with water, the inquirer would not ask, “Why did you spill the coffee?” The question would have been out of place. He would have asked instead, “Why did you spill the water?” The coffee is no more the doing word. It is now the water. The reason why the spilling happens is because something is in the cup. Spilling will not happen when...