Whatever Happened to the Pubic Sphere?
It is, perhaps, necessary to ask the intellectual gladiators on both sides of the partisan divide to pulse for a moment and ask themselves a simple question: what would be the verdict of history on the role every partisan is playing today? For it is clear that not a few of our public intellectuals abysmally lack a long view of history. Their mentality to issues is squarely here and now. What happens thereafter is none of their business. They don’t even bother about how what they do or say today would be viewed in 25 years time. Here we are talking of just a generation from now. Some public intellectuals express opinions recklessly to defend their otherwise legitimate partisan interests as if they are writing the last chapter of Nigerian history. The delusions of grandeur are amazing. Unknown to them, some of their activities might end up as mere historical footnotes. This is simply because regardless of who wins the election it would not be the end of this nation’s history. In the pursuit of their partisan interests, some public intellectuals have simply elected to pollute the public sphere. Public intellectuals are supposed to illuminate the public sphere with analyses and informed comments because they are equipped to do so, but in this season of anything- goes- commentary some commentators have shamefully darkened the public sphere.
The degree of pollution of the public sphere should remind us again of the theoretical pre-occupation of the German philosopher of the famous Frankfurt School, Jurgen Harbermas. For Harbermas, public opinion represents “the control and criticism of organised political authority which is officially manifested by the public come elections” and the public sphere itself is “a product of democracy”. So the freedom inherent in the public sphere should not be confused with the blatant abuse of forum that is prevalent in the build-up to the 2015 elections. For it to serve even its liberal democratic purpose, the public sphere should be defended against the polluters grandstanding as opinion moulders.
What passes for opinion nowadays is often no more than cursing or abusing the opponent. Some newspaper columns, radio talks and television programmes are replete with hate speech and vulgar comments. Virtually every forum is thoroughly abused. Base comments and vulgar statements have been substituted for analyses. Indeed, what some columnists dish out regularly is nothing more than advertisements for their principals and campaigns against the opponents. Strangely, the newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations and websites are not being paid for these adverts. The line between party publicists and analysts of public affairs is virtually obliterated these days. Maybe, the problem is not that these adverts as analyses of events are not paid for (as this should be the headache of the media owners); the cause of worry really is the immense damage being done to the socio-political fabric of the nation. A lot of what is published and broadcast in this season does not suggest that the nation is developing politically. You would think that the idea of election is new to this clime. Those who are not conversant with history would not believe that Nigeria has had 93 years of electoral history, not minding the years of military interregnum. The young and the old make statements as if the law of libel is on vacation. Prejudice and malice have suddenly become virtues in the public sphere. There is no hallowed ground anymore. No institution seems immune from the virulent effects of what has happened to the public sphere. Sensibilities are being egregiously assailed. The respect for religious and ethnic sensibilities could now be waived because in this game all means are fair.
The matter is made worse in the social media where patently anti-social behaviours prevail. Some partisans take advantage of the anonymity and permissiveness engendered by their virtual personality to insult others in the most barbaric way. It is a game in which quality of the content is no factor. And there is no line between decency and indecency. The sophistication of the technology of the social media is belied by the primitivity of some of the contents. The Marxist dialectic of uneven and combined development plays itself out curiously in the social media. Mercifully, digital warfare on the Internet has not been staged physically. God forbid that such ever happens because it would cause rivers of blood to flow. In recent history, the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama in the United States is often cited as the eye opener about the magic of online campaigns. But the debasement that goes on in the cyberspace in the name of the 2015 election in Nigeria is not what any decent mind should glorify regardless of the partisan position. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under the leadership of Professor Attahiru Jega posses the regulatory powers over the electoral process. Its job is made more difficult by the verbal warfare in the public sphere. You wonder if players think that the game has any rule at all.
For clarity, as a category of bourgeois democracy, the public sphere is the arena of freedom. This freedom is worth defending. In fact, this is how Habermas himself put it many years ago: “By the ‘public sphere’ we mean first of all a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body. They then behave neither like business or professional people transacting private affairs, nor like members of a constitutional order subject to legal constraints of a state bureaucracy. Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion – that is, with the guarantee of freedom of assembly and association and the freedom to express and publish their opinions – about matters of general interest.” The point at issue now is how to apply this freedom to deepen democracy rather employing it to spread bitterness and discord. The freedom should be in the service of national integration.
Beyond the deification or demonisation of candidates, the reality facing the nation is that whoever wins the election would invariably have to confront the issues of our time – mass poverty, insecurity, corruption, decay of the social sectors, manipulation of ethnicity and religion etc. If the incumbent, President Goodluck Jonathan, of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wins, his policy conceptualisation and articulation would have to change in the second term to come to terms with enormous development challenges. If General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) wins he would have to summon creative ideas of policy for the nation to make progress. Either way, the nation would have to be rallied with a unity of purpose to solve these problems. That is why polarising political statements are unhelpful to all political interests in the long run. The misuse of the public sphere is contributing to the rapid division of the nation down the middle.
Once more, propagandists should be reminded that there must be a nation first before any politician can preside over it.