ABUJA (Sundiata Post) And this is for our television stations. But we shall begin with Channels. Channels, professional assessors agree is the best we have about here. They have been wining the best television station of the year for the last 10 odd years, back to back.
But like virtually all other television stations they make this one mistake. We illustrate. On the matter of the PDP election of Uche Secondus, Channels chartered in one lawyer. His name, if one recalls well is Dwala. He was characterized as a Lincoln Inn trained lawyer and stands in as a legal pundit. And that is excellent. However he is given a moonlighter’s window. He is and also doubles in as a public affairs pundit.
What doesn’t immediately make sense is how a super lawyer and pundit on legalisms can also be a public affairs or policy analyst. One, to be pundit you need to be expertly trained and some specialized in any given area. Now public affairs and or policy just as law is a specialized area. And to be pundit in public affairs as in law, you need specialized training and continuous retraining.
Now there are specialists, experts, in public affairs as there are in law and legalism. Today, the era of renaissance wisdom or competence is gone. Aristotle for instance, is reputed to be the last man who read all the published books in his day. It is just that with the present vastness of knowledge, aka specialties and sub specialties, it is no longer feasible to hold expertise in any two separate disciplines.
And as Dwala was talking it showed. First he lacked the register to talk and critique public affairs and politics. All he delivered was an expert’s roadside perception of matters beyond his expertise. At best his was an unwise wisdom. At his worst he looked some ignorant and pitifully biased. And he gave the impression public affairs is something you learn on the streets, something you don’t go to college for.
Well, one won’t know if Channels was trying to rationalize costs, buying two for the price of one. If not there is no point pushing Peter or Dwala beyond their levels of competence.
One, it is a gross drain on our human resources as audience, time and all. Audiences are not paying television cable fees to watch alleged experts stray into areas they know little or nothing about. And two, it doesn’t make for comparative advantages. If Channels can’t get to give us expert’s opinions let them run adverts, play music or even go blank. Why? We already have a superabundance of common man’s opinions, at our beer parlors, the marketplaces, the villages, and offices etc. So why gift us with spittle when we are already drowning in the pond?
Let us give one example. Dwala’s comments on unity list is wondrous to put it mildly. The point is that there is no democracy in which there are no caucuses and sub-caucuses. In fact caucusing is what defines politicking and power sharing. And it happens in Washington, London and Tokyo. It’s best illustration is in Japan one believes. In Japan, where there is actually a one party rule – Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, LDP, has virtually been in power continuously from 1955 to date but for a few year. With LDP, caucuses rise and caucuses fall, but the LDP rules. That is the presence of a list of caucus members is not suggestive of corruption as Dwala asserts in his confident but wondrous unknowing.
There may be corruption, but caucuses are not causal or correlated links. So the lawyer Dwala has to prove corruption if any, but that must be independent of a list or caucusing. It’s imaginable that if Dwala was properly briefed in public affairs and history, he would have been more circumspect with his uncircumcised claims.
Anyway nobody should blame him. This is Nigeria. Out there in America, Europe, Japan and China, before you turn up a [television etc.] pundit, you would have written book/s, critically well received books in that given area. But here you can come up with a Nepa or utility bill and you will be voted anything – including legal pundit, public affairs guru, moral majority leader and articulator. Here oratory is deemed as insight.
Lest we are misunderstood, we are not saying citizens should not air their opinions on anything, not excluding rocket science. All we are saying is that that should be bundled under entertainment, not policy television. And finally Nigerians must now be warned: A bleeding heart is not evidence of genius. That you are concerned doesn’t make you informed, not to speak of expertly so. For Dwala, next time you are asked what you doesn’t expertly know, better excuse himself and return to your lawyering. That is how Americans do it. You don’t deliver common knowledge with expert postures. ”That is obtaining.”
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