The hall was filled to overflowing capacity. The faces of guests in and around the hall shimmered and glittered with smiles. It was not so much as to appreciate the theme of the lecture. It was more of knowing and realizing that the guest lecturer, Mr. Sam Omatseye, chairman of Editorial Board of The Nation Newspapers, Lagos, was the one standing on the podium. From time to time, the hall erupted with hilarious acclaim and infectious laughter as Omatseye, resplendent and quintessential in his speech, teased with unbridled brilliance.
The occasion was the Trinity University public discourse series and the theme was Information in An Age of Flux. The university is located within the ambiance of Yaba where the cool of the environment is serene and suitable for academic exercise. As Omatseye stood stoically to receive citation before the lecture proper, the hall stood still while the academic environment opened its doors to welcome him. As usual Omatseye wore his impeccable smile which is his habitual trademark.
All over the hall with the smallest spaces occupied to the full, students sat in clusters, ears open, eyes blazing with curiosity to welcome this man they have heard so much about. This journalist they read in the papers daily, more so, every Monday. This author their Mass Communication and English and History teachers use on and on as reference point to teach them the rudiments of communication and the act of writing and the ideals of journalism. You could as well see how attentive they were as their teachers sat upfront to have a closer glimpse of the guest lecturer. That in itself was how it was when Omatseye mounted the podium. As soon as he took over tearing at the theme of the lecture the hall became dead silent.
He said, “Time and information intersect like twins”, as his face beamed like a midday sun. “We even need information to know time and time to secure information. Hence the historian is the most important tool to the social scientist”. This is so because the historian, like Herodotus, the father of history affirmed since timeless history, is the custodian of time. “And so if the social scientist needs the historian, memory is the armour of all humans”. Indeed history is official memory. Without memory and history, how can man solve his numerous problems in time and space?
While he regaled on issues, hammering on stages of transformation of information over different periods of history and time, guests in and around the hall cheered him on and on. He tore through time. He gave Caesar what belonged to Caesar and still retained the beauty and the essence of the topic. Education is the key of all knowledge. People, of course, perish for lack of knowledge. For this, Omatseye refreshed people’s memories back and forth. He triggered the ideas into space and made it clear that no society, in fact, the whole world at large cannot survive without the evolution of information. Every stage of life, each generation, so to speak, must come to terms with its own technology, its own bits of information transformation.
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It was the moment the university needed to assert its own prominence in the annals of time. This was why in the beginning, the Vice Chancellor of the University Professor Olusegun Kolawole gave him the leeway to choose the topic for the discourse. Omatseye, an information merchant, master information strategist and impresario, consummate writer and author, then settled for this theme. And of course, like Herodotus, he showed that from all over the world the information age is indeed in a state of flux. This is why it is now known as information age as well as global village. You cannot fault the historian with the accuracy of information and strategy.
While the lecture went on, the lecture halls of the university were all wired with loud speakers. The idea was for those who could not have space in the hall to listen to the lecturer. And it was crystal clear that students and some members of staff in those halls suspended other activities to enjoy the booming and profound voice of Omatseye. It was such a glorious moment. The whole campus suddenly woke up to this rare and stimulating academic renewal. The ideas espoused by the guest lecturer refreshed minds. They put the staffers on their toes. Omatseye ensured that he used history and punchy references to embellish his stuff. As history is his main forte, he did not spare information in that regard.
As he tore into time, he drew attention to the old Roman Empire; he also swayed into the Greek civilization. He did not pity the old Roman Catholic Church. All in all, history came fully alive juxtaposing with the information and then teaching the public how to use both to expand the frontiers of knowledge and modernity. History is important as a tool or weapon to zero into the events of the old that gave birth to this present moment. When Omatseye said, “technology is the way forward and back”, it meant history is the godfather of information. Without it the world is but a flicker of darkness. “Yes, as philosopher Karl Popper opined, we cannot predict the future because we cannot predict technology”.
However true it is for all time to come, he still noted, “but we can try to mediate by ensuring that the laws are more important than the criminal. That way, we can have both freedom and order and then the beat goes on for the media that is still looking for a new identity”. With some of his long and short time friends in the hall, the frenzy of the moment truly became more electrifying. The lecture became more engrossing, when questions began to come from different people. But in his usual benign and iconoclastic habit, he handled the questions with equal measure.
For him, the role of the mainstream media in the chaotic space occupied by social media necessitates the ombudsman to always assert their role as an umpire. “Yes, people should be made accountable for appropriating other people’s original reports as theirs. You cannot sit in one corner and then claim someone’s story when it is published. The ombudsman should investigate such situations, apportion the right punishments so that others will learn and sit up”, he said. Concerning the issue of balancing the story and knowing when the social media has gone frenzy with its usual madness, Omatseye insisted that there is no way the society can stop relying fully on the mainstream report to get the true and unabridged version of any event.
“The mainstream reporter is on the spot to report issues. He is paid, for instance, to visit Maiduguri to access the flood situation and file his reports. So he has his facts and figures. He reaches out to the people concerned for interviews, comments and so on. These are facts the social media reporters do not or may not have firsthand”, he averred. Omatseye explained that the greatest advantage the modern times journalists have is that technology has made it easier and faster to report events as they are happening as against the previous years when you had to wait for a while for the report to filter in.
He gave example when 200 military officers perished at Ejigbo, Lagos, in a plane crash. “When I got there from my Concord office in Ikeja, there were some military officers already rescuing the corpses. I joined in order to be seen to be helpful. I had to disguise as one of the locals to avoid being suspected. But eventually the DSS people spotted me and gave me the beating of my life. It was a jotter in my pocket where I wrote the name of the plane that gave me away as a reporter”. In the end he did a fantastic job that curried the attention of the whole world.
It is not the number of laws in the society that matter. What matters is for people to obey the laws and for those in charge to also enforce same. The more laws you make, the more people feel you are stampeding their freedom and the tendency to obey them becomes flimsier. Therefore it is good to have laws, but how much of such laws do people obey? What we have to contend with more is the issue of morality and the consciousness to be of good conduct. On that note, the lecture came to an end while the university authorities presented him with gifts as a sign of appreciation. Group pictures were taken in different stages to signal all’s well that ends well..(The Nation)
