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Tag: Azu Ishiekwene

  • What you might expect in 2025 – By Azu Ishiekwene

    What you might expect in 2025 – By Azu Ishiekwene

    “Arsenal fans are currently over the moon, testosterone pumping – and why not? The story will not change in 2024… the odds are not in Arsenal’s favour… My forecast is that despite setting his ducks in a row, (Godwin) Obaseki’s candidate would lose in September. His biggest undoing would be the large army of political enemies he has created in the last eight years – some inevitably from the reforms he introduced, but others, and in a far larger number, avoidably from his mean-spirited, opportunistic politics.”

    ALSO READ || What You Might Expect in 2024, December 29, 2023

    This is the fifth in my series of annual forecasts. For a part-time Nostradamus, my record has been above average. The forecasts usually come earlier, in the last week of December. Yet, the potency of this edition is not diminished by the delay. 

    I made a particularly catastrophic forecast for last year, which has left a puree of tomatoes on my face and those of a significant segment of the liberal press in the US, led by CNN: that President Joe Biden would defeat Donald Trump. That didn’t happen—not because Biden didn’t beat Trump, but because Biden was not in the race.

    There were a few other misses, but on the whole, whether it was about Arsenal, the value of the exchange rate by year-end, or when Dangote and the public refineries would start production, I was bang on the money.

    A word for ministers

    Let me start with some unsolicited advice for politicians, especially President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s ministers. Their biggest mistake this year would be to take the President’s statement during the December media chat that he won’t replace them at face value. 

    He said he wouldn’t replace them, not that he would keep them at any cost. I forecast that by May 29 or earlier, the president will replace ministers, especially those who have since outlived their IOU value. As pressure mounts ahead of the pre-election year, no fewer than five of them will be replaced or reassigned by the end of 2025.

    Fighting Tinubu

    It’s 2025, but it feels like 2027. It has been this way since the end of last year. Leading politicians from the North, notably former Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido, spent much of 2024 regretting that the region supported Tinubu and swooning over how to stop his reelection. The schemes will reach a fever pitch this year as the government presses ahead with the Tax Reform Bills, which are perceived as anti-North.

    The tax bills won’t be the only thing over which Northern politicians would raise a battle cry, even though it’s unlikely that they will stop the passage of a watered-down version. 

    When the government’s deadline against keeping dollars outside the banking system expires in July, those saving the greenback for the next election will cry foul and demand an extension, if not an outright rejection of the policy. They will argue that 1) the government has no right to tell them what to do with their money and 2) it targets Northerners, who are dominant operators in Bureaus de Change.

    In the same way, the census, as planned, is unlikely to be held this year. Some states, especially those in the opposition, would declare it an ingenious attempt at gerrymandering ahead of 2027. If the federal government goes ahead, they might repeat what happened in Lagos in 2006, when Tinubu was governor: mount a legal challenge, failing which the states would conduct their separate “census” and declare their figures valid.

    Opposition in disarray

    Yet, this is the year of the ultimate scramble for presidential favours, especially among politicians who can’t afford to wait for another four years in the cold. They’ve been joining the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in trickles. As the shambles of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) becomes a ruinous heap and the Labour Party produces more heat than fire, more and more will flock to the APC.

    Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar will remain the PDP’s albatross despite his efforts to act as its best card. Those hoping for an opposition coalition to challenge the APC in 2027 will be disappointed. The likely arrowheads of such a coalition—Atiku, NNPP’s Rabiu Kwankwaso, Labour Party’s Peter Obi, and political strategist-in-a-limbo Nasir El-Rufai—would be unable to find a common ground. 

    Ambition, ego, and a perennial distrust of one another will ruin these strange bedfellows. Whatever is left of their political remains will be buried by their heartbroken followers. The new exiting class of second-term governors, likely from the South West and the North East, with money, ambition and a desire for fresh conquests, particularly Seyi Makinde and Bala Mohammed, will overplay their reach.

    Twice lucky

    Governor Charles Soludo will likely be returned for a second term in November despite snippers from his party, APGA, and outside.

    Where’s the money?

    On the national stage, I worry about the economy. My advice is to view government officials’ rose-tinted forecasts with caution. The coming onstream of the Dangote Refinery, especially, and the partial production from the Port Harcourt Refinery helped ease pressure on foreign exchange demand, mainly because crude was purchased in naira. It would be interesting to see how this naira-for-crude arrangement will hold, especially as Dangote Refinery expands its markets outside Nigeria.

    Prices would likely be more stable, with marginal improvements in the macroeconomic outlook. However, with the relatively high debt level, more borrowing crowding out private sector credit, and 2,604 uncompleted projects inherited from previous governments, it will be hard to find cash. 

    Feeding the cash cow

    Revenue will continue to be a problem for at least two reasons: First, the government’s main cash cow, crude oil earnings, is unlikely to reach the anticipated 2m bpd, and the benchmark oil price of $75 pb might prove overambitious. 

    Multiple sources told me that current production levels are around 1.4-1.5m bpd, discounting for condensate. However, unless the government radically restructures the NNPCL, the weak and heavily politicised structure will underperform. 

    Shell’s $5 billion investment in Bonga is good news but will not crystalise until 2028/29. There are no new investments in the country’s mineral mining leases that NNPCL incompetently manages to inspire confidence or significantly relieve the current budget cycle. 

    Second, the government’s effort to improve farm output and moderate food inflation—currently the most severe threat to social security—is still in its early stages. Food inflation will remain relatively high this year, likely around the five-year average of 35 percent. Retooling the value chain to deliver results beyond the current subsistence levels will require radical steps for at least another cycle to bear fruit. 

    Managing discontent

    To stave off social discontent from hardship, governments at all levels must invest more in the weak and vulnerable, especially the growing army of urban youths who will drift more into cybercrimes in significant numbers this year. As for security, the final piece of the puzzle for establishing the state police will likely be completed this year, leaving only the paperwork for its implementation.

    Between Arsenal and Trump

    Is this finally the year broken Red Hearts will mend, the Year of Arsenal? It would be easier for Trump to take Canada as the 51st State of the US than for Arsenal to win the Premier League in May. If the club is exactly where it was this time last year (40 points after 20 games), the odds are that it will end up where it did in 2024: nearly there. The crown in 2025 is Liverpool’s to lose.

    Trump 2.0’s pledge to execute the most extensive mass deportation in US history, just like his dubious promise in his first term to build a wall at Mexico’s expense, will be mired in litigation, logistics, and obstacles by some states and other institutions. It will hardly take off. However, he would have much greater leeway with his protectionist trade policies, potentially sparking retaliation from major US trading partners.

    The great thing about Trump is that he won despite evidence that he would be the most unguarded US president in recent history. Nothing he does will surprise.

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • A nation at war: Five days in Israel – By Azu Ishiekwene

    A nation at war: Five days in Israel – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Perhaps three will be the lucky number. After at least two previous failed attempts, a peace deal between Israel and Hamas might be reached by January 20 or in the early days of Donald Trump’s second term. Or…

    It’s a matter of perhaps, with a big P. Optimism is a rare commodity in a region with the longest-running conflict and the largest river of bad blood. Yet, after over 450 days of war with its predations, traumas and devastations, a bit of optimism is not a bad thing.

    In that spirit, I accepted the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs invitation for a five-day official visit between December 15 and 19. 

    To visit or not?

    One week before my trip, Bashar al-Assad fell and fled to Russia. The inheritor of a legacy of hostility toward Israel, his father, Hafez, once demanded the cession of the Golan Heights as a precondition for peace between Israel and Syria. Bashar’s fall ended over 50 years of the Assad dynasty, leaving in its place an uncertain and dangerous void.

    With a ceasefire holding by a thread, this was an inauspicious time to visit anywhere in the area, let alone the country at the heart of the renewed conflict. 

    Yet, after passing up the invitation in January 2023, I decided to go on my first trip to Israel. As our plane, Flight ET 404, descended from Addis Ababa, flying low over the Mediterranean, which bounds Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, at past seven in the morning, I couldn’t help imagining the worst. 

    With Hamas launching over 19,000 rockets – mainly unguarded missiles – against Israel since October 7, not a few of them targeting Tel Aviv, Israeli airspace has become something of an aviator’s nightmare. As Flight ET 404, carrying seven African journalists from Nigeria, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana, among other passengers, approached Ben Gurion one hour behind schedule, I thought, what if a stray rocket hit us?

    Never say never

    It may sound like the product of an overwrought mind contaminated by familiarity with bad news. But after Hamas killed more than 1,139 people, including women and children, on October 7 and took 364 hostages, many of the victims at a peace party in Nova, southern Israel, overthinking the worst appears to be the standard way of life. 

    The pictures of the victims at the Nova party with their stories written on small boards and hoisted on wooden poles above beds of candles and flowers at the memorial site are also engraved in the hearts of families up and down the country, still struggling to come to terms with what happened on that day. 

    At the Bring Them Back Home Now office, an NGO in Tel Aviv, 82-year-old Itzik Horn, a survivor of two terrorist attacks in his original home in Argentina, shared the story of how his two sons, Yair, 46 and Eitan, 38, were kidnapped from the Nir Oz Kibbutz not far from Nova, the epicentre of Hamas crime scene on October 7. Eitan had gone to visit his brother Yair for the weekend when Hamas struck. 

    A father can’t forget

    After the attack, Horn did not hear from his children again for weeks until a Hamas video surfaced showing they had been taken hostage. 

    “I’ve not heard any news about them again since November (2023),” Horn said, hunched over a chair on the verge of a forlorn hope from retelling this story a million times. “A father can’t just forget his children or give up on them, can he? I want to know what is happening to them. Are they gagged, dead or alive? I want to know. I want them back home, now.”

    I still have, as a keepsake, the felt pen of one of Ela Ben-Zvi’s three children, scattered among the shards of glass and other household items, strewn on the floor of her vandalised, bullet-ridden home in Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the oldest kibbutz in Israel impacted by the attack.

    Seven hours in the bunker

    Ela, her husband, Eyal, three children, and a dog had lived in Be’eri, separated by a wire mesh, only five kilometres from Gaza. On the morning of October 7, when the bomb alarm went off at 6:20 a.m., she had nine seconds to get to the shelter with her children, aged 8, 5, and 3, and her dog. It was not an unfamiliar drill. 

    Except this one was longer and more harrowing for the retired soldier and her husband, let alone for the children and the dog, who were consigned for seven hours to a relentless siege in a bunker hardly suitable for more than two.

    The IDF later rescued Ela and her family, but her dog died afterwards. Her neighbour, a 78-year-old woman living alone, was not so lucky. The Hamas attackers murdered her in her bed, one of the reported 102 people killed in Be’eri on that day.

    Some sheikhs were here

    Upcountry, in the Ramim Ridge of the Naftali Mountains in Upper Galilee, the story of Orna Weinberg from four generations in the Manara Kibbutz, a community described as Israel’s northern shield, exemplified the paradox of the strife between Israel and Lebanon, its northern neighbour. 

    “When this Kibbutz was founded 81 years ago (before the State of Israel), we didn’t have water,” Weinberg said as we stood overlooking a UN truck on the other side of the border. “We used to fetch water from Lebanon, bringing them up here on mules and barrows. When the first water pipes were installed, the sheikhs of these Lebanese villages came to celebrate with us!”

    As we inspected the ruins from the multiple rocket and mortar attacks launched by Hezbollah, the silence only broken by Weinberg’s narration and the sounds of our shoes crunching the remnant of mangled metals, twisted glasses, and other household utensils littering the floor inside one of the bombed buildings in Kibbutz Manara, Weinberg’s story sounded like a tale from another world. 

    “Nowhere to go!”

    What is left today of that once thriving community of 260 people where Rachel Rabin Yaakov, sister of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, also lived, is a shadow of itself. With at least five older adults dead after the forced evacuations that followed the Hezbollah attacks that affected 70 percent of the community, Manara is a ghost town sustained by the stubborn spirit of a few like Weinberg, who have stayed back to rebuild. 

    “We have nowhere to go. I have nowhere to go,” Weinberg said. “This is the only place I know. It’s the shield of the North, without which Israel will not exist. If Hezbollah prevails, if Iran prevails, not only Israel, but the whole world is in trouble!”

    About land?

    While pro-Palestinian sentiments frame the question as essentially one of decades of oppression and injustice arising from a land grab, several Israeli officials I met on this trip dismissed such sentiments, citing two instances. One, in 1979, Israel ceded the Sinai Peninsula, twice the size of Israel, to Egypt as a peace offering. 

    Two, in 1993, even after Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo Accords with Arafat under a deal supervised by US President Bill Clinton to prevent the creation of new settlements and pave the way for a two-state solution, top PLO officials, including Arafat, later described the Accord as a strategic manoeuvre before “the great Jihad.”

    Israel, they insist, is a victim of duplicitous diplomacy, mainly by Arab countries, that condemn its acts of self-defence in the daytime and, at night, urge it not to spare Shiite extremism, promoted by Iran, the most significant source of regional instability. 

    Against the odds

    It has a measure of Israel’s resilience that, despite the war and disagreements even within Israel about how best to handle the war and the return of the remaining 100 hostages, despite a Hamas information machinery that brooks neither dissent nor filters, Israel is still standing.

    Yet, its long-term security is intrinsically linked to its neighbours, with whom they have been joined by history and geography and must find and negotiate a common ground, one that might reenact Weinberg’s legend of the sheikhs from Lebanon.  

     

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • How Obasanjo nearly beat me up during Interview – Nigerian journalist opens up

    How Obasanjo nearly beat me up during Interview – Nigerian journalist opens up

    Veteran Nigerian journalist and Editor-in-Chief of Leadership Newspapers, Azu Ishiekwene, has gone down memory lane, recounting a near-physical confrontation he had with former President Olusegun Obasanjo during an interview.

    Ishiekwene in his latest column, “Back Story of Tinubu Interview,” reflected on his experience anchoring President Bola Tinubu’s maiden Presidential Media Chat on Monday.

    Ishiekwene was one of eight journalists chosen to anchor Tinubu’s maiden media chat.

    Recounting his experience, he said, “Apart from General Sani Abacha, I have met one-on-one with every Nigerian leader since 1992, from General Ibrahim Babangida.

    “However, I have only participated in one televised live group media chat with former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    “If you have met Obasanjo before – whether for an interview or anything else – you might agree that he’s a handful and more. You never know what to expect with Obasanjo, especially when he is in his lair.

    “I narrowly missed being punched by the former president during an untelevised interview in his Library in the Villa in 2004 for asking why his government was letting a political outlaw, Chris Uba run amok in Anambra State.

    “The combined effort of presidential aides, the late Remi Oyo and Professor Julius Ihonbvere, rescued me from Obasanjo’s fury.”

    He further revealed how the former president warned him on air, after he asked another question the then-president considered impertinent.

    “My experience wasn’t very different during the live presidential media chat. I had asked him why he ordered a shoot-on-sight against members of the militant Yoruba self-determination group Oodua People’s Congress, OPC, which operated mainly in the South-West, Obasanjo’s home base.

    “He was livid. He warned me, on air, that if I were going to bring the irreverence of my weekly column to the Villa, he would immediately throw me out of the panel.

  • Back story of Tinubu interview – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Back story of Tinubu interview – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Apart from General Sani Abacha, I have met one-on-one with every Nigerian leader since 1992, from General Ibrahim Babangida. However, I have only participated in one televised live group media chat with former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    If you have met Obasanjo before – whether for an interview or anything else – you might agree that he’s a handful and more. You never know what to expect with Obasanjo, especially when he is in his lair. 

    I narrowly missed being punched by the former president during an untelevised interview in his Library in the Villa in 2004 for asking why his government was letting a political outlaw, Chris Uba, run amok in Anambra State. The combined effort of presidential aides, the late Remi Oyo and Professor Julius Ihonbvere, rescued me from Obasanjo’s fury.  

    Are you OPC?

    My experience wasn’t very different during the live presidential media chat. I had asked him why he ordered a shoot-on-sight against members of the militant Yoruba self-determination group Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), which operated mainly in the South West, Obasanjo’s home base.

    He was livid. He warned me, on air, that if I were going to bring the irreverence of my weekly column to the Villa, he would immediately throw me out of the panel. I insisted on an answer, to which he said, “If you’re a member of OPC, tell your people that I mean what I said!”

    Three presidents, different styles

    Presidents Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan, and Muhammadu Buhari, whom I also met at different times in different untelevised encounters in the line of duty, were distinct in their peculiar ways. 

    Yar’Adua spoke a little, measuredly and candidly. Jonathan was gentle, felicitous, and vulnerable without a care in the world. Buhari was taciturn, defensive, and tight-lipped, except when you touched on a raw nerve, mainly around his family or his relationship with Babangida, with whom he has had a fascinating Tom-and-Jerry relationship. 

    I poked Buhari on this soft spot in an untelevised group interview in 2016. His unusually animated, angry reply inspired a widely publicised story that covered The Interview magazine, entitled “Why Babangida removed me from power.”

    Road to interview

    The Monday televised interview with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu differed in many ways. Multiple sources, including those inside his cabinet, had pressured him to host an interview many times, but he refused, insisting that the time was not right and that there was much to be done. 

    In October, 17 months into his presidency, there was a nearly interview on the eve of the planned second round of the #EndBadGovernance protest. He cancelled at the last minute for personal reasons. 

    When I received a message on December 18 that I had been selected for a panel to interview the president, I assumed it would be live. Not that there’s any journalistic rule forbidding a recorded interview. Some of the best interviews I’ve read about or seen, from Oriana Fallaci to Larry King, were recorded. In a more recent example, the CNN interview with President-elect Donald Trump was recorded on November 25 and aired on December 12.

    Live or recorded?

    However, I hoped the interview with Tinubu would be live – a point I later found was shared by all panel members – because this was the first nearly halfway into his presidency. If eating this toad had taken 19 months, it’s better to eat it big for Nigerians to hear their president engaging them unfiltered. 

    The choice of live or recorded can sometimes be tricky. Like Ebenezer Obey’s famous story in the song of the Journeyman and his Donkey, you can’t please everyone. Some want it live because it allows spontaneity and could sometimes be a window on the persona of the interviewee. Others prefer a live interview for traps to catch the interviewee in their unguarded moments, which is why others oppose it.

    The panel

    We—a panel of seven—comprising Dr. Reuben Abati (ARISE TV/ThisDay), Maupe Ogun-Yusuf (Channels TV), Nnamdi Odikpo (NTA), Jide Otitoju (TVC), Umar Farouk Musa (VOA), Ruth Olurounbi (Bloomberg News), and me—wanted to have this interview live and for two hours for the reasons I’ve explained.

    That didn’t happen. Hours before the interview, which was postponed from Sunday to Monday because of the tragic deaths from palliative stampedes in different parts of the country, we finally settled for 90 minutes. The questions were entirely ours to decide, and that was what happened. 

    Some folks have been upset that the interview was not live and, to make matters worse, not a brawl. One gentleman, obviously with a heavy heart, said, “I expected my seniors on the job to rattle the President.” I get that. Another was not even interested in the interview. He aimed at me instead, saying that even though I’m an Igbo man (which I’m not), I did not wear a red cap (which I’ve never worn) because of an “inferiority complex!”

    To cut or not?

    It’s the nature of recorded interviews—and this one was no exception—that not everything is aired. Twenty questions were prepared, and at least 17 were asked point-blank, excluding unscripted queries and follow-ups. 

    Among the unaired questions were whether the President considered Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), a political liability and whether direct payments to the local governments were not a derogation of the principle of federalism, which recognises the centre and the states as the fundamental constituent units of the federation. 

    Questions also arose about #Endsars and state police and whether the president would request the Code of Conduct Bureau to release his assets, as one or two newspapers requested under the FOIA of 2011.

    His answers were fascinating. He described Wike as a performing minister and a very good man. He said it twice, slowly but louder and with a hearty laughter of approval the second time. In response to the Supreme Court’s judgement on local government autonomy, he said, “There are at least two ideological views on that. The thing is that the constitution created the local governments, and there isn’t such a thing as ‘unfunded mandate.’” 

    Translation: If the law created local governments, it is not unlawful for them to receive their funding directly. That debate continues.

    ‘I’ll consider’

    On state police, he said he didn’t expect any obstacles but expected a negotiated outcome in the country’s best interest. His response to the question on asset declaration was even more fascinating. I remember that in 2012 this question left Jonathan with a media chat black eye. He was asked if he didn’t care about the growing public demand that he should declare his assets. In what was initially thought to be a slip, he said, “I don’t give a damn!” That turned out to be a damn good headline the next day. 

    Tinubu took a different approach. He said he had done his part by filing his assets as required by the law and would do so again at the point of exit. But when asked if he would ask the CCB to release it since there is currently no law mandating the CCB, despite the FOIA, he said, “I will consider doing so.” That, I think, is worth holding onto.

    Everything couldn’t be covered in a one-hour broadcast, and perhaps one live or recorded interview will hardly satisfy the pent-up hunger to hear the president. But one presidential interview at a time, the gap is closing.

     

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • An accidental Christmas story – By Azu Ishiekwene

    An accidental Christmas story – By Azu Ishiekwene

    If I’ve learned anything these past 35 years of journalism, it’s looking for a story in every situation. It wasn’t different when I left home for the airport on December 14, except that this time, the story found me. My Uber driver started the conversation: “Are you Mr. Azu of LEADERSHIP?” he asked.

    I confirmed I was but didn’t make much of his question since he could have gotten the information from Truecaller. I also found from my Truecaller that he was identified as “Doc. Jibrin.” However, in a country where people love big titles that mean nothing, anyone can call themselves anything.

    Somehow, I tested my prejudice by asking him if he was a medical doctor. “I’m a paediatrician,” Jibrin replied. I paused in confusion. I have read many stories of graduate drivers or professionals doing odd jobs. Working odd jobs is hardly news in a country with 33 percent unemployment, mainly among young graduates. However, being a paediatrician Uber driver in a country with a paediatrician-patient ratio of roughly 1:525 was new for me.

    We got talking. I asked him how he became an Uber driver, and he told me it was something he did as a pastime when he was not on duty twice a week at a government hospital. He told me how being an Uber driver has allowed him to meet people and how many of his passengers responded in shock whenever he told them he was a paediatrician.

    He told the story of one passenger, a wealthy businessman, who offered to use his license to open a medical facility, promising him heaven on earth, but he refused. 

    “He gave me his number and other contact details and asked me to think about it and get back to him. He said he was running a pharmacy using a nurse’s certificate and was thinking of something bigger. I declined politely,” Jibrin said. “Something about him just didn’t connect with me.”

    I asked a bit more. Where did Jibrin go to school, and why did he become a paediatrician? He flipped the roles gently and charmingly, smiling and laughing as he did so. Based on my questions, he figured I must be a senior journalist and wanted to know more about me. Did I go to school in Nigeria? Were my parents well-to-do? 

    I told him that I grew up in Ajegunle, one of Nigeria’s most famous ghettos, and all the schools I’ve attended – from primary to university – have been in Nigeria. One thing journalism has done for me is that it has allowed me to travel, learn, expand my network, and sharpen my curiosity whenever I meet people like him.

    He smiled again, and immediately, I retook my role as interlocutor. Why did he study paediatrics, and where? 

    “I love babies,” the young man, likely in his late thirties, said. “I’ve always been fascinated by their tenderness, innocence, and vulnerability. If you want to know about babies, watch parents when their babies are ill. Sometimes, you don’t know who is suffering more – the babies or their parents!”

    He told me he attended Medical School at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Ile-Ife and returned to specialise in Paediatrics. At OAU, he had an encounter that would significantly impact his life. His best friend at medical school was Chima, a bright young Igbo man with whom he immediately struck a kindred spirit. As Jibrin told me the story of Chima, I watched his countenance change and his smile disappear. 

    Even though the incident happened nearly 10 years ago, the pain seemed fresh in his memory. 

    “When Chima told me he was travelling to the East, there was no way I could have guessed that would be the last time I would see him,” Jibrin said. “On his way, the bus in which they were travelling was ambushed by armed robbers. All the passengers, including Chima, were forced to lie face down on the road and shot many times. When I saw my friend’s body, I couldn’t recognise it. That picture of his bullet-ridden body is etched in my mind!”

    Chima’s medical career was not the only unfinished business when he was killed. Apart from his career and traumatised friends, Chima also left behind a girlfriend who was pregnant at the time of his death. 

    “I decided,” Jibrin said, “that I would be responsible for his pregnant girlfriend and the baby.” 

    He was as good as his word. For the next several months and in a country where religion often divides, Jibrin, a Muslim from Gombe State in the North East, took upon himself the responsibility of looking after the pregnant girlfriend of his dead friend, a Christian from the South East. 

    When the baby was born, her mother named her Joy. “You should have seen the baby,” Jibrin said. “She looked so much like her father. In a way, her birth brought some closure to the wound that Chima’s death inflicted.”

    Jibrin struggled after medical school but kept his commitment to his friend’s girlfriend and the new baby. “Chima’s younger brother knew about this,” Jibrin said. “But he is an apprentice somewhere and can’t stand on his own feet yet.”

    Three years after Joy’s birth, something dramatic happened. Her mom came over to see Jibrin with Baby Joy and asked if she could leave her with him for that weekend because she wanted to travel. 

    “I couldn’t say no,” Jibrin recalled. “My girlfriend was staying with me, and even though she was reluctant initially, we both agreed that looking after Joy for one weekend wasn’t too much.”

    And so, off Joy’s mother went. One weekend led to another and another. And she wasn’t coming back. Jibrin’s girlfriend started asking questions. At this time, Joy’s mother had become unreachable, and nothing he told his confused and angry girlfriend seemed to make sense. “She kept asking me to come clean, to level with her,” Jibrin said. “It soon became obvious she wanted me to confess what I had not done.”

    The relationship broke up. Jibrin, unable to look after Joy and still find his footing as a young doctor, decided to take Joy to his elder sister in Jos. There, she asked all the difficult questions his girlfriend had asked and more. She begged Jibrin to tell her the truth: Was Joy his child? 

    He couldn’t convince her but managed to suspend her doubts. One or two years later, he got married after a problematic negotiation during which he told his new wife that she must accept and treat Joy as her daughter as a precondition for the marriage.

    Fast-forward. Jibrin has three children—all girls—two younger ones aged six and three and his adopted daughter, Joy, who is now nine and in junior secondary school. “She tops her class,” he told me proudly as we drove into the airport.

    And then he told me something else. He’s been wrestling with the question of how to raise Joy – as a Muslim, which he is, or as a Christian, which his friend Joy’s father was? “The matter has troubled me so much I had to seek advice from a cleric who said I should bring her up in my religion.”

    As Jibrin dropped me off at the car park attached to the terminal building, I thought to myself: I think the cleric is right but for a different reason. Once you have formally adopted the child, how you raise her is entirely up to you. Most parents might agree, however, that once the child reaches a certain age, often young adulthood, what they do with their lives is entirely up to them. 

    And don’t be surprised if that includes creating new idols in a networked shrine with limitless potential for good and evil. It’s enough to know that you did your best by them while you could.

     

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • Why Ghana’s election matters – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Why Ghana’s election matters – By Azu Ishiekwene

    The news from Ghana was not how John Dramani Mahama’s opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), defeated Nana Akufo-Addo’s ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). 

    The news was how Akufo-Addo managed to survive a full second term. Towards the end of his first and for much of his second term in office, he governed with his head on the block, just waiting for the axe to fall.

    His party’s loss in the December 7 presidential election was a defeat foretold. It was barely two years after Akufo-Addo assumed office in 2017 when doubts about his party’s viability began to surface. It shouldn’t have been so. 

    His predecessor, the John Atta-Mills/Dramani government, made such a mess. Apart from divisions within the NDC, it was further weakened by a series of serious corruption scandals, the most remarkable of which were the government’s involvement in the transfer of $11 million and £9 million paid by a party financier and a litany of failed promises. 

    Dramani’s loss to Akufo-Addo relieved the loser, who only managed to finish Atta-Mills’ term after the latter died in office.

    Hero to zero

    As I wrote in a 2022 article, Akufo-Addo was off to a flying start. From New York to Beijing and Paris, he became the new face of the African Renaissance, saying the right things wherever he went on the global stage and raising a $3 billion Eurobond for Ghana’s restructuring that overperformed its order book by $21 billion. 

    Despite his best efforts, COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine War put Ghana in a tight spot. The country’s predicament was worsened by poor fiscal discipline, unstable commodity prices, and a capitulation to pressure from Labour to increase public sector wages to unsustainable levels. 

    Akufo-Addo’s party paid upfront for the country’s misery. Multiple protests rocked the streets of Accra and other major capitals, and voters couldn’t wait to bury the NPP with any remaining claims of good deeds at the polls. 

    Beyond elections

    However, the election meant something more for the subregion than about angry and tired Ghanaian voters removing an incumbent government.

    In the last four years, the subregion has been plagued by military coups reminiscent of a bygone era. Mali, Niger, Guinea and Burkina Faso have formed an arc of Delinquent States, with three of them sundering the decades-old Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) by creating a parallel Alliance for Sahelian States in defiance of the regional powerhouses and even the AU.

    Successful elections and transitions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria, and Ghana have offered a counter-narrative. It’s all the more heartening that the ruling party’s candidate in the election, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, did not wait for the official result before conceding defeat, reinforcing a trend started in 2015 by Nigeria’s former President Goodluck Jonathan.

    Job for powerhouses

    The successful transition is good news for regional economic stability. Although the four break-away states constitute half of the ECOWAS area and only seven percent of economic activity within the zone, the economic sanctions imposed on them by the subregional group impacted swathes of the primarily poor populations across the region, where informal cross-border trade, mainly in food, make up about 30 percent of regional trade.

    Stable transitions in Ghana and Nigeria, the region’s two economic powerhouses, would allow ECOWAS to reassess its options – a significant point in the agenda as the sub-regional group meets in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, this week. 

    Delinquent Four on the agenda

    Should ECOWAS continue to engage the breakaway states in its efforts at faster regional integration, especially in light of the fragile relations between these states and France, in an era where Russia and China are lurking and the US is self-absorbed? Or has the time come for the group to chart a new course and accept a future without the four breakaway states?

    That would not only be an economic decision. It also carries significance for subregional security. Burkina Faso and Mali are out of the ECOWAS multinational joint task force. Protracted or failed elections in Ghana would have further weakened the group’s crisis response mechanism at a time when Nigerian military authorities are grappling with new security threats from Lakurawa, an ISIS franchise. 

    It’s unlikely that the new government in Accra, on the watch of Mahama, one of the mediators during the post-election dispute in The Gambia in 2016, would depart significantly from the leading role that Ghana has played in subregional peace support operations, which goes back to its role in ECOMOG in the 1990s. 

    Go to court!

    At a more granular level, there are other reasons why Ghana’s election matters, especially in relations between Abuja and Accra. Already, the commentariat in Nigeria is holding up Ghana’s election as a model for the election management body in Nigeria. Apart from former President Jonathan’s pre-emptive concession of defeat nine years ago, Nigeria is perhaps the continent’s capital of disputed elections. 

    Of course, Nigeria’s election management body needs to raise its game. Fundamentally, however, the chaos reflects the winner-takes-all mentality among Nigeria’s political elite, which has increasingly seduced the courts to decide elections. Often, when Nigerian politicians taunt their opponent to “go to court” after an election, they are confident of a favourable outcome.

    Ghanaian Jollof

    Nigerians also envy Ghana’s rise as the new destination for big business, a prospect that could only have been enhanced by the smooth election. Despite Ghana’s economic crisis, Nigeria has lost several fintech and manufacturing companies to its western neighbour in the last three years. 

    Guinness, for example, has moved its operational headquarters to Accra, while others, such as Afprint, President Industries and Aswani – all in the textile sector – are reportedly contemplating relocation. Because of Ghana’s stable and predictable political environment, tech giants, including Google, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook, have not hidden their preference for it despite Nigeria’s significant market size. 

    Whether, apart from its business attraction, Ghanaian jollof would also best Nigeria’s jollof in the unending cuisine war between both countries in the next four years under Mahama remains to be seen. 

    Voters’ psyche 

    If there’s anything that the outcome of Ghana’s election teaches, even beyond the subregion, it is that voters don’t forgive politicians who leave them feeling worse off. You may have saved them from COVID-19, the fallouts of global conflicts elsewhere, or the headwinds afterwards. However, what weighs on their mind when they cast their ballot is whether they’re feeling better off today. 

    That was why Rishi Sunak lost to Keir Starmer in Britain, and Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in the US. It was also why Akufo-Addo survived his second term by the skin of his teeth but failed to hand over the baton to his deputy in Ghana.

     

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • Word of the Year 2024 – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Word of the Year 2024 – By Azu Ishiekwene

    I was watching the evening news on Monday night when two presenters used a word at different times that jolted me. I’ve heard and seen that word used often, especially by millennials and Gen Z, but I didn’t entirely pay heed because they were mostly in informal settings. 

    Anyways – I meant to write, anyway – I was jolted to hear that word, anyways, twice from two TV presenters on different programmes on the same station just minutes apart! My Use of English teachers would have beaten the straying “s” out of me if I had used that word even in error. 

    But that was at another time, before young adults invented more new words and other tokens of social expression, including memes and abbreviations, than at any other time in recent lexical history, thanks to technology and the prevalence of social media.

    Words avant-garde

    I’m trying to adjust, but I’m not quite there yet. And in this transition to a brave new world of avant-garde lexicography dominated by young adults, it’s improbable that I would have considered, anyways, a jarringly colloquial word, as proper form.

    However, Oxford United Press (OUP), the bastion of rectitude, is leading the world in de-sensitising squeamishness in the use of the English language. In other words, sooner than later, I might well find myself loving and even using, anyways, in proper communication.

    In a language and literary study in 2023 for the Word of the Year, OUP crowned “rizz” as the winner. The Press said it created a shortlist of eight words “all chosen to reflect the mood, ethos, and preoccupations” of the previous year and “rizz” emerged as the favourite after over 30,000 language lovers worldwide pared down the word soup to four finalists: rizz, Swiftie, prompt, and situationship.

    Rizz up, darling!

    In case you’re interested in a brief history of the etymology of how rizz might soon become mainstream, OUP explained that just as the fridge was from refrigerator and flu was from influenza, rizz (a noun), which can also be used as a verb, as in “to rizz up,” meaning to attract, seduce, or chat up), has its roots the word “charisma.” 

    I’m unsure which word might win OUP’s crown in 2024, but I have an in-vogue word slate that would be difficult to ignore. Perhaps lovers of language, especially millennials and Gen Z, the generational curators of these species of unusual words, might help crown a winner from my list for 2024 and share that list on any of my social media handles @azu ishiekwene or email azuishiekwene@gmail.com. Or text Word of the Year to +234 805 210 0356.

    The first candidate for me is “steeze.” I was confused the first time I heard it and couldn’t immediately determine its meaning. An English language coach and content creator on Quora, Jasveer Kaur, described “steeze” as “A slang term which is a mix of ‘style’ and ‘ease’, that means ‘looking effortlessly cool, i.e., charisma or grace.” It’s a cousin of rizz, or “composure”, another synonym for steeze from the Gen Z corpus.  

    The lit vs the ill-lit

    And how about “lit?” When I first heard that someone was “lit”, I thought they were alight, literally burning! It turned out that I was hugely mistaken. “Lit”, I later found out, means something different. It’s a slang derived from African American Vernacular English, which gained popularity in the 2000s. It’s been around for quite a while, but somehow, the “ill-lit” like me never quite thought it would soon be making its way to the mainstream. 

    But thanks to hip-hop and pop culture, it has become a favourite expression among millennials and Gen Z. If you say, “The concert last night was lit,” for example, or “Her performance in the game was lit,” there’s nothing more to add. It’s the highest expression of excitement and enthusiasm. In the same way, my father’s highest compliment was “noble”, as in “You’ve done noble!”

    Rizz, lit, and dope, I’m told, are in the same class, with ritz (derived from the ostentation of Ritz, the famous hotel and hospitality brand) being at the higher end of the word spectrum.

    Who’s the simp?

    How about “simp”? It’s not exactly a new word. It has evolved, losing five original letters in the process, but gaining new meaning and currency with TikTokers. Back in the day, that word used to be “simpleton”, a man or woman generally thought or believed to be naïve, foolish. Hip-hop culture in the mouth of younger adults gave it a makeover. 

    They twisted it against men today, and now a simp is often used to describe a man who is overly anxious to please women. This seems to be the opposite of “demure,” a word formerly used to describe modesty in young ladies but now repurposed to convey cuteness in both sexes. 

    Instead of the ‘50-50 Love’, Teddy Pendergrass crooned about in his famous album, a “simp” is a man who doesn’t mind five percent or less back for his affection and empathy in exchange for 100 percent. He is if you get my drift, a woman wrapper.  

    If you are already “vibing”, millennial-speak for “losing oneself in great music or conversation”, or feeling “shook”, the colloquial noun or verb for “surprise”, then welcome to the evolving vocab world of young adults fostered by the Internet. From activism to fashion, sports and dating, the language topography is changing, leaving older adults in a trail of incomprehensible slang. 

    Simply steeze

    In the slang line-up for 2024, anyways, steeze, lit, rizz, vibing, shook, and simp are in the race. But the stage would be incomplete without “ghost” (to suddenly stop communicating with someone, as in ‘he ghosted me after our last meeting’), “no cap”, (the damn truth, no embellishment), as in ‘petrol prices will never return to N470/litre, no cap, or “snack”, (someone attractive, as in ‘she’s looking like a snack in that outfit’).

    While these words have a global resonance, one would undoubtedly be at the top of your final list if you were a Nigerian young adult—at home or in the Diaspora: “E choke!” The harsher, more menacing version is “Hunger dey!” However, this latter expression has a broader application and is quite popular among older adults. 

    When young Nigerian adults say, “E choke,” they express the country’s severe economic hardship. This hardship has left many of them unable to have that sharwama or pizza, fix the braids they’d love to, or even chat for a long without resorting to data mincing. 

    This ethos was expressed in the streets of many Nigerian states in August, when protesters, mostly angry youths, staged demonstrations captioned #Endbadgovernance, the lightning rod for economic hardship. But the word is used in more than one sense. It also conveys overwhelming pleasure, as in “Give me more, even if it kills me!”

    E choke!

    My five finalists for the words that most captured younger adults’ moods, feelings, imagination, and ethos in 2024 are e choke, steeze, no cap, vibing, and composure. I struggled to get the language tool on my laptop to accept these words. I had to overwrite them many times to retain them, as I wondered how examination bodies, like the West African Examination Council (WAEC), would cope with this lexical insurgency. 

    Is it an indication of the distance these words still have to travel in the transition from fad to mainstream? Or is society just too slow to catch up? No matter, as they say in millennia-speak, las, las, culture, language, and tool developers would be alright.

     

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • The fuss about Kemi Badenoch – By Azu Ishiekwene

    The fuss about Kemi Badenoch – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Donald Trump’s election overshadowed Kemi Badenoch’s emergence as the leader of the Tory Party of Britain. Yet, no one gets the worst political job in one of the world’s oldest political parties and walks away quietly.

    This is especially the case when the candidate is a straight-talking, ideological woman and a child of an immigrant in a largely conservative society.

    It was not a mistake that a section of the British press framed the last contest for the Tory leadership as one of the worst match-ups in recent times, if not in its history. 

    Here was Badenoch, a black woman (who doesn’t like to be described in racial terms), in a contest against three men, two of them white, and the last man standing, Robert Jenrick, was snow white. Still, all, including Badenoch, were caricatured as the miserable, surviving heirs of a once-illustrious political party.

    Like Trump like Kemi?

    Some have compared her with Trump, which is nonsense. The only way she resembles Trump is in her plain speaking, which is a rare quality in politics. Comparing Badenoch to Trump for depth, intellect, or character is a disservice to demagoguery for which Trump has no equal.

    Although she had only been in the House of Commons for seven years, her rise was forged in the extraordinary turmoil of British politics in the last decade. She held junior cabinet positions under Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. She has been in politics since she was 25 and unsuccessfully contested a seat in the London Assembly in 2012.

    Two years ago, after Johnson’s fall, Badenoch contested the Tory leadership position but lost to Truss, whose eventual reign was as brief and chaotic as her competence. In love, as in politics, familiarity ultimately undermines affection. That partly explains why the Tories lost the last general election long before Labour won.  However, the killer punch for the Tories was not this natural course of affairs but the rise of Johnson and his succession by Truss, two of the most incompetent Tory leaders in decades.

    Scapegoats and guardian angels

    More than any leader in modern British history, these two dragged the Tory party to the left at the expense of its traditional base, giving ground to right-wing clowns like Nigel Farage and others. But the besotted press did not see that—or they pretended they didn’t—until, despite Rishi Sunak’s best efforts at Tory house cleaning, the party suffered one of its worst defeats from years of accumulated rot. 

    It’s to Badenoch’s credit that, despite that setback and criticisms of her political views – some deserved – she gave it another shot and has emerged as the first black leader of one of the world’s oldest political parties. 

    But her foes in the culture brigade and the furious guardian angels of the Tory legacy won’t let her sit before fetching the long knives. They are upset. How did the party of the durable Winston Churchill, whose leadership saved his country and the world from Hitler, fall this low? 

    What has become of the party of Margaret Thatcher, who transformed the UK economy with her free-market policies and laid the foundation for the most extended spell of Tory rule? How can Badenoch, a poor imitation of Thatcher’s ideals, even if she claims her an icon, save the Tories from what looks like a long winter?

    ‘Kemikaze’

    In a baptism of fire after Badenoch’s second Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQT), John Crace of The Guardian wrote that she is “turning out to be the gift that keeps on giving…to the Labour party…Behind her rather patronising, condescending façade, there’s a largely empty interior. 

    “She is riddled with levitas. Her self-confidence is in inverse proportion to her abilities. She’s not nearly as bright as she thinks she is, and quite where she got the idea she is a brilliant performer in the Commons is anyone’s guess. It’s Liz Truss levels of delusion.”

    Yet, this was the same Badenoch who, two months before she was elected Tory leader, was described by Andrew Marr, author and respected UK political journalist, as “scorchingly clever.” This quality, which is supposed to be her strength, is why she has attracted some of the most scathing criticisms, with some describing her as someone who can start a fight in an empty room. 

    What she stands for

    Badenoch is something of a shock to a largely conservative society where reticence, class and race play big. She doesn’t believe in being identified by race, for example, and has argued that identity politics only scratches the surface of why nations fail. 

    She argues that just as the cloak does not make the monk, to say someone is black or white, gay or straight, does not explain who they are, but lazy politicians stoke race and identity because it saves them the real work of fixing society.

    She doesn’t believe in “multiculturalism” either, insisting that cultures make sense not in their numbers or variety but in what each contributes to building and advancing a society. Many would find Badenoch’s position unsettling, being the child of an immigrant herself and for a country like Britain, which has prided itself on being Europe’s melting pot and multicultural capital.

    Still on Sowell

    I can’t entirely agree with Badenoch that multiculturalism and social cohesion are mutually exclusive, that denial of identity politics wishes it away, or that, as she loves to argue, Britain didn’t profit from colonial rule. Interestingly, in Migrations and Cultures: A World View, Thomas Sowell, one of those Badenoch claims shaped her political views, makes a strong point about the role of migrations and relocations in redistributing skills, knowledge and development worldwide. 

    Whatever Donald Trump and the new right are teaching the world, migration by conquest, treaty, geography, or the sheer human desire for a better life is a fact of history. The unlikely rise of Badenoch to power—a Nigerian girl who, at age 16, returned to Britain, where she was born—proves that migration works. However, she might argue that the problem is not migration per se but the unwillingness to integrate with host communities.

    My disagreement with the new Tory leader on this point does not suggest even remote support for the vicious attacks she has received from a section of the press in Britain or those in her native country who think she must bend a knee to those who want to exploit her Nigerian heritage before she has even settled down.

    Not as brittle as they think

    As I wrote, when Sunak emerged as Tory leader (and closet xenophobes may be squeamish all they want), the rise of a racially diverse and unconventional crop of politicians, not only in terms of cultural background but also the ideas they represent, is a good thing for politics – whether in Britain or elsewhere.

    Sunak lost to Keir Starmer, not necessarily because Labour was very popular—Starmer won with less than 20 percent of eligible voters’ votes—but because the particularly catastrophic years of Johnson and Truss had eroded trust in politics. 

    Badenoch has a lot of work ahead of her, but she has the competence, character, and energy to do it despite the snippers at home and abroad. You don’t get this far in the furnace of British politics by being a levitas. 

     

    Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the new book Writing for Media and Monetising It.

  • Is AI coming for the journalist? – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Is AI coming for the journalist? – By Azu Ishiekwene

    One year ago, on November 15, 2023, the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) invited me to speak on “Nigerian Media, Sustainability and Existential Threats by Big Tech.” Being asked again this year is a privilege, but I won’t be surprised if this is my last invitation. 

    Perhaps I won’t need to come as a presenter next time. A learning machine, Anaba possibly, might be here to do the job. This may sound incredible, but increasingly, with improvements in infotech and biotech, it seems that what AI cannot do does not exist. 

    In its most basic definition, generative artificial intelligence (AI) refers to computer systems capable of performing complex tasks that, historically, only humans could perform. Journalists, for example, used to think of themselves as the masters of storytelling in a hurry and God’s gift to the world as gatekeepers. We’re humbler now.

    Luddites’ nightmare

    The widespread use of AI is causing anxiety among journalists and other professionals, especially the Luddites. Recently, I wanted to redecorate my apartment. I asked a furniture company in Abuja to recommend an interior decorator. The two recommended insisted on a pre-inspection deposit of 100k, which I wasn’t prepared to pay. 

    I went to ChatGPT and imputed a description of my apartment with measurements, asking for a photo design. I got it in minutes, complete with a floor plan and car park design. ChatGPT even asked if I needed optional designs! Midjourney or AR would give far more incredibly splendid options! 

    According to Digital News Project 2024, “Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2024” by Nic Newman, apart from rising costs and declining revenues, 300 digital leaders from more than 50 countries/territories also expressed significant concerns about using AI for backend news automation and experimental internet interfaces, including AR and VR glasses, lapel pins, and other wearable devices.

    What’s AI up to?

    Let us look briefly at two recent examples of the use of AI in storytelling, one in North America and the other in Europe, that have resonated in many parts of the world. 

    In Mexico, Grupo Formula, the country’s leading broadcasting group with 2.3m YouTube subscribers, created three avatars—NAT, SOFI, and MAX—three robotic journalists who generate content in entertainment, sports, and politics for the company’s social media handles. 

    The group’s director of technology and AI infrastructure told the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, “The news stories that NAT, SOFI and others present are small stories and very focused towards young people who don’t connect well with the old-style newscast. We are looking to connect with these young people using technology.” Grupo Formula’s subsidiary, TV OAI, is the first news channel in Latin America powered 100 percent by AI.

    More recently, a Polish radio station, Radio Krakow, announced the relaunch of OFF Radio, the first experiment in Poland where AI-driven characters take on the role of traditional journalists. 

    In response to concerns about the increasing role of automation in the physical and cognitive spheres, Yuval Harari said in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, “It would be madness to block automation… to protect human jobs. After all, what we ultimately ought to protect is humans – not jobs.” I agree.

    What opportunities exist?

    What opportunities does AI present, and how might journalists use them for storytelling? a). Streamlined content production: AI tools can significantly streamline content production, allowing journalists to focus on the creative aspects rather than time-consuming tasks and drudgery. 

    For example, algorithms can assist in generating ideas or first drafts; b). Personalisation of content: Algorithms can analyse user preferences and behaviours to create bespoke narratives with individual audiences; c). Enhanced engagement: AI can create immersive and interactive storytelling experiences. 

    For example, games and multimedia stories that adapt based on user decisions can attract individuals who may not typically engage with traditional forms of storytelling; c). Creation of new opportunities: The fusion of AI and human effort can create new possibilities previously challenging to imagine. 

    One good example is the collaborative effort involving 400 journalists from 80 countries sifting through 11 million documents and 2.6 terabytes of data during the Panama Papers investigation; d). Generative AI can repurpose chaos: In an article entitled “AI news that’s fit to print,” Zach Seward wrote, “Faced with the chaotic, messy reality of everyday life, LLMs (Large Language Models), are useful tools for summarising text, fetching information, understanding data, and creating structure…but always with human oversight.” This article also shares some of AI’s best and worst use cases.

    Challenges of AI use

    Ethical concerns in AI storytelling include the potential for generative models to create misleading information, such as fake stories or images that blur the line between reality and fabrication. The Cambridge Analytica case and COVID-19 are good examples. Concerns about legal liability and privacy protection have also been expressed. 

    Other concerns include quality, coherence and creativity, originality, fairness and bias, and adaptability to genre and audience. 

    Limits and success stories:

    AI is a work in progress. Again, from Seward’s article, we could use lessons from some excellent and ugly examples of its application even in countries where automated storytelling appears to be well-established already. First, the nasty experiences:

    CNET and the tech error soup: Last January, CNET, a tech website, published financial advisory stories on short-term saving instruments, how to manage and close bank accounts, and other topics. Although the byline said the stories were written by the platform’s “Money Staff,” they were not. Language machines wrote them, but the massive errors (described as moments of hallucinations) exposed the site! Actual staff members saved the day by cleaning up the copies.

    Sports Illustrated’s Street Spin: The Street, a publication from the stable of Sports Illustrated, published a raft of bot-generated stories and made matters worse by curating and attaching fake author identities to the stories. The spin didn’t end well.

    Good news

    But there have been good experiences, as well:

    Modelling for pattern or image recognition machines has proved valuable when analysing large data caches. Media houses such as Buzzfeed News and The Wall Street Journal have used AI to establish significant trends in otherwise desperate and solitary occurrences or patterns. 

    Examples range from the Mauritius Leaks, which involved 200k highly technical documents, to the story on the miles of dangerous lead cables around New Jersey streets that posed severe public health risks to residents. Zach Seward also documents a few other examples in his piece entitled “AI news that’s fit to print.”

    Where is the Nigerian storyteller? 

    Professor Farooq Kperogi and I collaborated on an academic paper for the Journal of Applied Journalism and Media Studies entitled “Light in a Digital Blackhole: Exploration of Emergent Artificial Intelligence Journalism in Nigeria.” 

    The study found that social media and the rise of citizen journalists have changed the landscape and accelerated the mainstream adoption of automated journalism. 

    More media houses use tools, including social media integration software like Echobox, Hootsuite, Revive, and Dlvrit, to drive audience and revenue goals. The election watchdog Yiaga Africa collaborates with some TV stations to collate and analyse election results using AI tools. Automated fact-checking systems, drones, and language management tools are also being deployed.

    While costs and infrastructure remain significant barriers to adoption, attitudinal differences between younger journalists and the older, more established ones were also noticed, with newsrooms embracing more diversity in age cohorts and educational backgrounds. 

    Job losses? What jobs?

    Our study did not justify the fear of imminent job losses among Nigerian journalists. However, the impact of the disruption on readership/audiences and revenues due to economic reasons and changing demographics is undeniable. 

    It would be good if anxiety about job losses led to greater introspection, retooling, and adoption of technologies and practices that improve journalism, especially the core business of storytelling. 

    If the destination is uncertain, the least we can hope for is that we are in good company, human or otherwise. And it won’t matter if the chatbot delivers this lecture next year!

     

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and the author of Writing for Media and Monetising It. This modified version of AI-Generated Storytelling: Opportunities and Challenges was based on my presentation at the 20th Annual Conference of the NGE on November 8.

  • Unusual reasons Africa wanted Trump to win – By Azu Ishiekwene

    Unusual reasons Africa wanted Trump to win – By Azu Ishiekwene

    I understand wealthy US citizens and conservatives of the evangelical hue rooting for Donald Trump. The rich believe he would loosen regulations and protect them and their businesses from excessive taxation. Conservative evangelicals believe he is the bulwark against wokeism, especially the ultra-liberal variety. And white folks want their country back. 

    But Africans at home and in the Diaspora – what is their business supporting a guy who described their continent as a “shithole” and has worn his anti-immigrant rhetoric on his sleeves? It didn’t seem to make sense that anyone who saw Trump 1.0 would ever dream or wish for the second version. But now, he’s back. He even has the Supreme Court and the Senate in his Red corner as of press time.  

    With the media (especially the major networks) awash with polls indicating a dead heat up to zero hours, I became more interested in the pro-Trump sentiment among Nigerians. I also checked in with friends elsewhere on the continent, and the feedback surprised me.

    Trump, we want

    Some friends told me Trump is just the man the US needs to purge itself of its hubris and arrogance. Once upon a time, the US was a moral force for good worldwide. Its exceptionalism didn’t often require bullying others to make the point. 

    It did many bad things during the Cold War, as did its arch-rival, the Soviet Union. But after that phase and with the fall of the Berlin Wall, many had hoped to see the emergence of a multipolar world, one in which, if you like, the lion and the lamb would lie side by side.

    But that was not to be. From Cuba to Venezuela, Libya to the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, and right up to the old sphere of influence of the USSR, the US stoked—and still stokes—a zero-sumness that hardly brooks “live and let live.” Since then, the world has experienced fewer devastating wars, but it has wrestled with no fewer tensions of a new variety aided and abetted by technology. 

    Same difference?

    Trump 2.0, these folks hope, will do at least two things for the world. It would further hasten the internal decay of the US by aggravating racial tensions and emboldening right-wing excesses. Two, Trump’s America First ultra-insularity and his off-the-fly foreign policy style will distance the US from its traditional allies and enable crazies around the world, like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, to run amok.

    This sounded more like saying that if US voters were happy to be seduced by their worst selves, they deserve what they get. 

    But that was not all. Some also wanted Trump’s victory as a stick to beat their leaders back home. On the eve of the election, Larry Madowo of CNN reported that Kenyans wanted Trump to win because “with him, you know where you stand.” The report contrasted Trump’s style with Kenya’s political elite, who could hardly be trusted. 

    Trumphobes 

    The CNN report might also have been about Nigeria, where Trumphobes wanted him to win for a slightly curiously different reason. They think his anti-immigration policy will force Nigerians and their government to fix their own country. In the US, Nigeria has the highest diaspora population of Africa, 327,000 citizens, followed by Ethiopia, 222,000, and Egypt, 192,000. 

    It didn’t matter much to the Trumphobes that Nigeria’s US diaspora sends home $20 billion yearly, an increasingly significant source of support for a distressed economy. What is at work is a reverse schadenfreude, which says that the fewer opportunities Nigerian immigrants have outside the country, the more seriously the government would be obliged to fix the country.

    Someone even said to me that the “malicious support” for Trump was payback for the bad leaders that the US routinely propped and supported around the world, a list that included Saddam Hussein, Augusto Pinochet and Mobutu Seseko. 

    Republican African record

    Some pro-Trump sentiments are, however, driven by facts. For example, Republicans have a far better record of engaging Africans than Democrats. The Republican Party opposed colonialism. Its support for African initiatives such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and efforts to combat AIDS contrasts with the Democrat’s preference for aid diplomacy.  

    The hope is that Trump 2.0 will not be an exception. Here, Diasporans are not too far from their Black cousins in the US. A NAACP poll in September showed that one in four Black men under 50 supported Trump for president. 

    Trump 1.0 showed tough love towards Africa, but it was on his watch, for example, that the US finally authorised the sale to Nigeria of the much-needed fighter jets for the prosecution of the war on Boko Haram, which President Barack Obama had blocked for eight years. On his part, President Joe Biden will only make a brief visit – his first to Africa in four years – to Angola on his way out of the White House.

    Better or worse?

    Trump’s overwhelming victory might mean one of two things for his presidency: The weight of the responsibility could humble him and increase the likelihood that he would be more restrained than before. On the other hand, it could also bring out the worst in him – that feeling that he never really lost in 2020, that he was cheated of victory as he claimed, that it’s now time to take his pound of flesh with a vengeance. 

    We’ll have to wait and see. If Trump 2.0 means Africans who were not on the radar during the campaign will now have to look inward and find their way through an uncertain future, then so be it. 

    Ukraine and Gaza

    Trump’s victory might hasten the end of the war in Ukraine and, hopefully, improve the protracted global supply chain crisis that has affected the supply of agricultural products and cooking oils to many African countries. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky knows he cannot depend on Trump to bear the cost of a war that has, for all purposes, become a meat grinder. The war in Ukraine might end sooner than later.

    As for the Middle East, Trump. 1.0 moved the Embassy of the US from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem despite protests by the Palestinians and some Arab countries. If that means anything, it should suggest that Trump 2.0 will not walk on the eggshell of a two-state solution in his approach to the current war on Gaza. He’s flat-out pro-Netanyahu and big on oil deals with Gulf states.

    I make no pretence of my dislike of Trump’s politics. Nor do I have any illusions that his second term would be significantly different from his first, which left the world holding its breath dangerously for four years. But if he’s the man American voters have chosen to lead them, so be it. Unfortunately, what America does – for good or ill – affects the rest of the world whether or not we cast a ballot. 

     

    Ishiekwene is the Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book Writing for Media and Monetising It.