Journalists, students and ‘stupid’ questions
By Promise Adiele
Drama, as an exalted genre of literature, recreates human follies and foibles. In different ways, the genre re-enacts all the plausible conditions and circumstances which define humanity.
When we declare that an event was dramatic, we either speak in terms of incredulity or heightened excitement or fatality and tragedy.
Drama is deep. Call it the make-belief art and you won’t be wrong.
Ritual is dramatic, a festival is dramatic, worship is dramatic, and governance is dramatic too.
A press conference is dramatic and lecturer/ students interaction is also dramatic. One of the most distinguishing features of drama is a dialogue which can sometimes take the form of question and answer.
If questions are asked and no reply is given, the dialogue cannot continue and drama suffers a stillbirth.
There is an Igbo adage that says that travellers who ask many questions can never miss their way. Such is the importance of question and answer in the whole dramatic enterprise.
Recently, Femi Fani-Kayode, the erstwhile aviation minister, was involved in a hot exchange with a journalist, Mr Charles Eyo, who had asked him a harmless question.
I am not going to dwell on the incident because it has received adequate media outrage.
My decision to ignore the details of that incident is because FFK has offered what I think is an honest apology.
On the heel of the issue, he received enough media-bashing both on social media and mainstream media. No one wins a war with the media.
I would have bashed him further but since he has apologized, let us all spare him and move on. It takes a lot of courage to apologize and only heroes do so. Cowards don’t apologize because they lack courage.
However, the encounter between the journalist and FFK provides a template to interrogate the place of questions and answers in human relationships.
Although FFK has been forgiven, he is going to play an important role as a character in a new drama, where I will use him to represent some haughty political demagogues, who do not want to be questioned about their conducts in office.
I will use the journalist as a character to represent those of us who ask questions while his colleagues during the press conference, who watched in utter bewilderment while FFK disgraced their colleague, will represent millions of people in our country, who keep quiet in the face of obvious misrule by the political class.
With this composition, the cast for our drama is complete. Journalists are trained to ask questions.
Any journalist who does not ask questions is not worthy of the profession. Students also ask questions.
Asking a question is a healthy process of seeking knowledge. Anyone who does not ask questions is not a genuine seeker of knowledge.
Anyone who does not tolerate questions is not only wicked but accommodates perfidy in the heart. I have been asked questions before, very embarrassing and confusing. By my training as a teacher, taking questions from students during classes is a part of the teaching ritual.
Students must ask questions and when they do, a lecturer must answer them. I remember one day when I was asked a rather bizarre question by a female student. The occasion was a drama class at the University of Lagos.
I was teaching the students Bernard Shaw’s play Mrs Warren’s Profession.
In the play, Mrs Kitty Warren is a prostitute who, after making so much money from prostitution, established a brothel where she employed young girls and gave them out to men in exchange for money.
However, Mrs Kitty Warren sent her daughter Vivie to university while she exploited other people’s daughters. Although Mrs Warren was not married, she added the title ‘Mrs’ to her name to gain public respect and acceptance.
I explained to the students that disguise is an inexorable part of prostitution, that there are many levels of prostitution besides standing on the road at night, and that any woman who submits her body in exchange for money is a prostitute no matter who she is.
There was dead silence in class as many of the female students could hardly raise their faces.
I also explained to the students that while writing an academic paper on the play, the reviewers had advised that I interviewed a prostitute to better understand the 21st-century dimensions of prostitution.
In doing so, I had interviewed two separate prostitutes at Opebi and Allen Avenue. The details of the interview were the focus of my essay titled “My encounter with a prostitute” published in The Nation Newspaper.
After these explanations, many of the students asked questions but I didn’t expect the last question from an inquisitive female student. “Sir, you seem to know so much about prostitutes, have you patronized them before”?
As the student dropped the bombshell, the whole class erupted. For more than three minutes, the class was in utter commotion.
The students cheered, some of them rebuked the girl who asked the question, and there was total confusion in class. As I watched the students quarrel over the appropriateness or otherwise of the question, I made up my mind to answer it.
The question was valid and needed to be answered. After normalcy returned to the class, I quietly thanked the student for the question and encouraged them to ask as many questions as possible. Of course, I admitted to having visited two prostitutes before but basically for research and not for patronage as the student insinuated and I went on to recount my experience with the prostitutes.
I encouraged them to read my essay by that title in The Nation Newspaper. The whole class clapped. I had answered the question. Was the question embarrassing? Yes. Did it require an answer? Yes.
It is improper for people to designate some questions as stupid and other questions appropriate. When you are asked a question, answer it if you can. However, you can politely choose not to answer it.
I could as well have told the student that I will not answer the question, leaving her to lewd imaginations.
Let us return to FFK, Mr Charles Eyo, the offending journalist, and his colleagues who watched with glee while FFK dismembered one of them.
As I indicated earlier, each of these characters represents something. In our dramatic enactment of that event, Mr. Charles Eyo represents the few in Nigeria who are bold enough to ask probing questions as to how politicians conduct the affairs of our land.
The onlooking journalists represent millions of our people who prefer to watch and pray while the resources of our land are plundered by wicked, unconscionable public officers.
FFK on his part represents the typical public officers whose insipid and jejune sense of entitlement offends the gods regularly.
When the minority, in the character of Charles Eyo ask questions, FFK’s outburst is a typical reaction of our politicians who threaten, intimidate, and harass the questioner. I have been harassed many times for my critical essays.
Many people have lost their lives in this country because they asked questions. Politicians feel uncomfortable when you ask them questions about their stewardship.
Ask the presidency to give an account of all the returned Abacha loot. Ask the presidency to give an account of all the loans from China.
Ask the APC government what happened to the campaign promise of restructuring Nigeria when they come to power.
Ask the presidency why in heavens name Fulani herdsmen have not been branded a terrorist group. Ask the presidency the rationale behind pardoning and sending Boko Haram members to school.
These are monsters that raped, killed, and buried people alive while the families of their victims are left hopeless and miserable. Directly ask the presidency these questions and you will get the FFK reply.
Ask the senators what they do with constituency project funds. You will get the FFK reply.
Ask former governors why they bled their states dry but still earn a humongous amount of money in pension and gratuities, you will get the FFK reply.
Ask questions about governance, public service delivery and accountability, the FFK reply will follow. Ask why some governors have not paid salaries in over one year, the FFK outburst will follow.
Ask questions why a governor will give out very expensive SUV cars to judges in the state while parts of the state are ravaged by poverty and decrepit road network, the FFK reply will follow.
Ask a question about NNDC, about Akpabio, about Pondei and all the funds he was alleged to have embezzled, the FFK treatment will follow.
For the onlooking journalists who watched while their colleague was debased by FFK, they characterize millions of Nigerians who are complicit in the misrule that pervades our country.
Our failure to speak, to ask questions, and to engage those in public offices is the reason why impunity graduates in our country.
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Notice that the onlooking journalists in the FFK video were in the majority. Those who keep quiet in our country are in the majority, they are in millions.
They do not want to get involved, they do not want to complain, they do not ask questions, they criminally shout those who ask questions down because they are afraid of the FFK treatment from public officials.
We must ask questions, we must not just complain but ask probing questions. No question is stupid. Every question deserves an answer. Indeed, Wole Soyinka’s submission that “the man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny” is now more apt than ever.
