Maikori: Apology is not enough
Professionals are universally regarded as persons of high intellect who are bound by great ethical and moral standard in their fields. They are the people whom the society normally look up to whenever a situation requires their knowledge and experience. These include lawyers, doctors, engineers, clergymen and journalists.
The general practice all over the world is that professionals are held responsible for any conduct of theirs which caused injury or damage to others because, by law, they owe the society (or their clients) a duty of care. In Nigeria, contrary to what is obtainable in the wider world, professionals do as they like; many flaunt their rules of professional conduct without care or remorse because they are mostly allowed to go free without any personal or professional disciplinary action against them.
Last year in myriad of tweets, a lawyer, Audu Maikori, posted false report on his twitter account which some media houses publicized, that his driver and five students of College of Education Gidanwaya were brutally murdered by Fulani herdsmen in southern Kaduna, at a time when Kaduna, Northern Nigeria and Nigeria as a whole was tensed and saturated by the real and false/ exaggerated narrations of the crises. Only God knows how many innocent lives might have been lost in reprisals or counter reprisals sequel to this report and only God knows the indelible marks of hatred for Fulanis and Muslims that the report might have made in minds of Christians the world over, even though, similar hostilities exists between Hausa/ Fulani farmers and Fulani herdsmen.
I read a recent report of Premium Times that Mr Maikori has been arrested by the Nigeria police. This I believe is supposed to be a welcomed development and a heroic act for which the Nigerian Police deserves commendation from all lovers of piece and protectors of human lives, but to my greatest dismay, even an intellectual of high repute; a frontline activist; whom many of us look up to like Professor Chidi Odinkalu was reported to have allegedly called for the immediate release of Maikori thus: “They should immediately release him because he had apologized for the tweets and I don’t think the matter is a criminal offence that warrants him being locked up for so many days”.
I wonder whether we care about the rights to the lives and properties that Maikori’s statement might have endangered. True! He apologized. But when did apology become a defense in Nigerian law? Do we expect the authorities and other peace loving Nigerians whom he unprofessionally or selfishly misled to forgive him without proper investigation on whether his false statement actually caused damage, loss of lives or properties? And if it did, do we expect the authorities to accept his “sorry” without making him pay for his unprofessional conduct judiciously?
We don’t need to go to Rwanda to see how wicked journalism had caused the lives of hundreds of men, women and innocent children. On the 19th of January, 2010, Fulanis were massacred based on a completely false report that Muslims in Jos had set a catholic church on fire. This set the ground for other killings in hot reprisals and counters reprisals by both parties which has lasted for not less than five years. The worst part of it is that the long time neighbor relationship that existed between Beroms and the Fulanis, who had lived for decades together and understand the language of each other, had been curtailed.
As persons from whom the society expect high degree of refined conduct, many professionals in Nigeria have caused damages or even death to people and hid behind the sanctuary of “sorry”. Now as a professional, ask yourself “what do you say when you kill in your profession?” Is “sorry” sincerely enough?
Hussaini Hussaini, Abuja, hussaini4good@gmail.com