Before the advent of digital media with its era of quick clicks, the print media was the most enduring means of reaching and influencing minds. This made its practitioners visible and its Editors powerful. And connected. There was therefore, the tendency to see the world as your oyster, or worse, to think the world owed you, if you became an Editor of a national newspaper in your twenties or thereabout. Especially, in an era when truly national newspapers were few, and private, less fettered ones, even fewer. I was lucky to be among those in this category. But I was also lucky to be brought down to earth very quickly by people who had my interests at heart and had one or two life lessons to teach me.

Several decades on, I still remember what they said to me as if it was yesterday. I will recount two. One was from someone who had headed the PR department of a very powerful and lucrative parastatal. He was voluble and well liked – he later became a Minister in Babangida’s government. We ran into each other around the old Kingsway building on Broad Street – big men used to walk Broad Street/Marina a lot in those days. He pulled me aside and warned me not to take my new position to heart or confuse adulation for the post as adulation for the occupier. He followed up with his personal experience. He said the sheer number of rams and turkeys he got yearly during the two festive seasons of Sallah and Christmas would make people think he was into livestock business. He had not only gotten used to receiving them, people he was offloading them to had also become used to expecting them. Unfortunately, he got just a couple the year he left his job and nothing the following year. ‘Look Muyiwa, if you rely on these people, they will not only embarrass you, they will compound your embarrassment’. The other was from a renowned columnist and one of the earliest Editors of Daily Times, Nigeria’s flagship newspaper at the time. He told me people like me were lucky because there were people like them to learn from. ‘Don’t let your new office get to your head’ he counselled. ‘This assignment will finish sooner than you realise and there will always be life after it’.

These pieces of advice helped me to stay grounded. This meant I could do my job professionally and with empathy without being too attached to the position. It meant I could walk away on each occasion when I did, without thinking I would miss calls from top government officials and dinners with business personalities. But it is not that easy for many. I had a friend who had a phenomenal rise in his career. At 34, he was already living in Ikoyi. Then he had a clash with his boss and benefactor over what he considered an unethical behavior. His boss felt it was rude and presumptuous of him to point it out and asked him to apologize. My friend felt it should have been the other way. I asked him to resign rather than get into unnecessary contentions with his boss. That was when he told me his wife (American) was used to the perks of his office and the flowers in their garden. I got the message. Certain positions are difficult to walk away from if you think in terms of the perks of office. I have heard people who said they didn’t want a ‘drop’ in the standard they had been used to. In other words, whatever perks they were used to while in office must be available outside office. People like that will usually compromise on their jobs. I have also heard some people being urged to make hay in office while sun is shining – we live in a society where not amassing money is considered a sin especially if you are in public eye or in a position to enrich yourself. Unfortunately, seeking to make hay can lead to unbecoming compromises which can lead to blackmail in future. Besides, it is a character flaw. It is also hard to walk away from positions of power and relevance if one has not added value to those positions but merely abusing them. This partly explains why public office holders keep trying to ‘re-invent’ themselves by constantly changing political positions and parties.

The need to meet societal expectations by leaving public office richer has led to unimaginable avarice on the part of our politicians and public office holders. The sheer amount of properties – at home and abroad – allegedly traced to a former Governor of our Central Bank, the former Minister of Justice and recently, an immediate past Governor of a State among many sad examples, is just embarrassing to say the least. If it is an indication of what goes on across party lines, then Nigeria is indeed in trouble. Those who say members of opposition are being targeted by EFCC and ICPC are inadvertently attesting to the fact that it is widespread. They are also providing a reason for the gale of defections from opposition parties into the ruling party. But they miss the point or are shying away from it. The point being that these guys have a case to answer. Simple. The Achilles heel of politicians across party lines is corruption. And opposition members have lost their moral voices to decry corruption in government. They are also hardly in any position to talk about integrity. They sound like a pot calling another pot black – not a kettle because they are all the same - when they attack the ruling party on issues of integrity and anti-democratic antics. This is why many people are not enamored of the so called opposition parties because we know their antecedence. My message to intending opposition members who want to avoid being blackmailed into silence in future is to stay clean when in public office.

About the most valuable advice I was given those many years ago when I first became an Editor was not to do anything that would compromise my independence and values. I have tried to keep to that advice. My editorial judgements might have been wrong sometimes because I am human. But I have never been, and cannot be induced to write on what I don’t believe in. That is why I can claim to ‘say it as it is’ – apologies to Tunde Fagbenle, my friend and colleague. How many of our politicians, or indeed public office holders can make this claim? How many in opposition can cast the first stone when it comes to corruption in office? One of the reasons they defect or form new political parties rather than walk away from power is to seek protection over past misdemeanors. Power protects in our clime. Relevance shields.

•Muyiwa Adetiba is a veteran journalist and publisher. He can be reached via titbits2012@yahoo.com

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