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DAME Awards

Media Review

Columns

• How to bring back the book
• Can You See the Beauty of Many Parties?
• Identifying the flag bearer after our heart
• CAN primaries and Akande's fallacious argument
• The Ivorian conundrum
• Have you Registered?

Highlights

Cover

And Enahoro bows out

In his lifetime Anthony Eromosele Enahoro (1923-2010) was larger than life. As a journalist, he was unsparing of opponents, as a politician, he was a great debater, and as a leading light of reasoned contributions to public discourse, even in his old age, he stood out.

As a journalist he was part of hard-hitting crew that elevated anti British rhetoric to journalistic art, bombarding British colonial policies on newspaper pages. For his trouble, the Brits imprisoned him thrice on sedition charges.

Undaunted, he continued his pugilistic approach to politics, cutting down to size many an opponent in parliamentary debates. He shredded cant in official policies, endearing himself in the process into the hearts of grateful citizens.

He was elected into the Western Region House of Assembly in 1951, from where he also served in the House of Representatives. It was while he was a member of the latter that he moved the famous motion calling of Britain to grant Nigeria independence from 1956. Although Nigeria as a country did not win her independence as Enahoro wished, he began an agitation, which granted the regional governments a phased self government. Consequently, the West earned her self government status in 1956, followed by the East in 1957 and the North later...| Read more

Rite it Right

Checkmating S-VD

If there is one error of writing that exposes a writer as a chronic grammatical ignoramus, it is that of Subject-Verb Disagreement, which we may abbreviate as S-VD. The reason for this assertion is threefold. First Fold: Sentence is the single most important unit of grammar, and, indeed, of writing as a whole. Second Fold: Every sentence has, as its two essential parts, a subject and a predicate. Third Fold: Every subject must agree with its predicate, qua its verb.

You see, many people do write well, but not all who do so know what they are doing echoes of that verse in the Bible, where Jesus said: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” The point here is: Doing something without knowing what you are doing qualifies you as an ignoramus.

Nothing, perhaps, is more fundamental to writing than grammar, but many people can write well without really knowing the fundamentals of grammar, as such. This is not an indictment; it is just an acknowledgement of what may be referred to as man's natural linguistic endowment. But the unfortunate thing about this natural ability of ours is that it does not let us appreciate when we land into grammatical pitfalls...| Read more

Discourse

Editors as critical pillars
By Babatunde Fashola

When the Chairman of the Guild, Mr. Gbenga Adefaye called to inform me of the decision to invite me to speak at this year's event, many thoughts raced through my mind. I knew that I could not decline the invitation from the Guild. I hold the Guild and Mr. Adefaye in very high esteem since our paths crossed when I took my first steps towards political office as a gubernatorial candidate. My mind was conjuring up the many possible reasons why I was the choice of the Guild remembering that I had been here before to speak about our media management.

While I was still agonizing about the possible reasons why the Guild chose me again, Mr. Adefaye transformed my temporary misery into a prolonged one when he broke the long silence on the phone and said to me:...| Read more

Photography

EXHIBITION IMAGES OF 2010
What would have been a most befitting celebratory outing for photography in Nigeria never materialized in 2010; when the three 'wise' curators of the official month-long monumental 50th Anniversary Art Exhibition at the Velodrome in Abuja, for whatever reasons best known to them, failed to attract photographers to participate in this very important historical parade of Nigerian culture and arts. To give due credit though, it was a wonderful exhibition of Nigeria's great strides in contemporary creativity since independence in 1960; appropriately anchored on her world-renowned excellence in archaeological artifacts.

The lone photograph of Ben Enwonwu in-action creating his famous Queen Elizabeth 11 full sculpture inadvertently underscored the volumes of creative history as well as art photography would have lent to the otherwise good-intentioned national exhibition of such importance! Lets hope the wise curators get the right Nigerian photographers to help them produce, for posterity, a first-class exhibition catalogue...| Read more

Media Notes

Who Pays The Media Piper?
The position taken here that the ownership structure is the bane of the media of mass communication in Nigeria may not be supported by statistics and all that but come along nonetheless.

An analysis of the set goals and objectives, as well as the decision making process, which is a reflection of the ownership structure, ought to show why the media continues to fail, first as a business, and secondly, as an agent for social change.

Some of you may recall that some time ago, this writer had taken the position that the calibre of management personnel, which is not well rounded, is largely responsible for the failure of the mass media in Nigeria: That many ace journalists who ended up as media managers don't have a clue of what is expected of them in the executive suites. And, also, that some brilliant penny--pinching professional managers, who had no idea how the media can still remain an art form, even if it must be run as a profit-making business, did not help matters either...| Read more