Mbah: Media, Govt Must Meet at Point of Truth

…As Governor challenges editors to dig beyond headlines as NGE honours him for good governance

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Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah, on Thursday gave Nigeria’s editors a simple assignment: look beyond the headline, interrogate the claim and find the truth.

He also gave government its own share of the homework tell the people what you are doing, account for the results and be prepared to face scrutiny when the figures do not add up.

Mbah spoke in Enugu while welcoming more than 300 editors attending the 22nd All Nigeria Editors Conference (ANEC), organised by the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE).

The conference, with the theme, “The Ballot, the Media and the Task of Keeping Democracy Alive,” and the sub-theme, “When Lies Look Real: Detecting and Debunking AI Misinformation Before, During and After Elections,” comes at a time when truth has acquired an increasingly difficult competitor: technology capable of manufacturing convincing lies.

For Mbah, however, the old rule of journalism remains useful — check the facts.

He said the government and the media did not have to be permanent adversaries, arguing that although both institutions had different duties, they ultimately owed the Nigerian people the same responsibility.

“Government must be transparent about what it is doing and be accountable for the results. The press must establish the facts and report the truth,” the governor said.

“Sometimes that truth will expose failure. Sometimes it will reveal progress. The obligation for us both is the same in either case – serving the people of Nigeria.”

He urged journalists to resist the temptation to begin with a conclusion and then go looking for evidence to decorate it.

“My challenge to you, therefore, is simple – go deeper, beyond the surface,” he told the editors.

According to him, the strength of journalism lies in its independence, in examining evidence, testing competing claims, establishing what actually happened and reporting the findings without bending them to fit a predetermined political narrative.

The governor’s warning assumed greater significance against the backdrop of artificial intelligence, which he said had made misinformation more sophisticated and harder to detect.

Photographs can now be fabricated. Voices can be cloned. Videos can be manipulated. Public figures can be made to appear to say what they never said.

In such an environment, Mbah said, professional journalism must become more rigorous, not less.

He equally cautioned against a form of political blindness in which government achievements are dismissed simply because they do not fit a particular narrative.

“We have tried to build an Enugu government that is open about what it is doing and clear about what it is trying to achieve. Where we fall short, that should call for scrutiny and be reported. But the same principle applies when the evidence reveals progress,” he said.

The governor used the occasion to put some of his administration’s scorecard before an audience whose professional duty, by his own invitation, is to verify it.

He cited more than 1,500 kilometres of roads constructed or reconstructed, over 7,000 classrooms, Smart Green Schools and Type-2 Primary Healthcare Centres across the state’s 260 wards.

He also listed investments in water infrastructure, new transport terminals and CNG buses, the revival of Enugu Air, efforts to revive dormant industries and the development of a new city.

Mbah said the administration’s broader ambition was to position Enugu as an economic gateway to the South-East and make the state one of Nigeria’s leading economies, while improving human development and the quality of life of its residents.

He acknowledged the support of President Bola Tinubu and the Federal Government in areas including roads, aviation, energy and regional development.

But the governor did not ask the editors to take his word for it.

Instead, he invited them to inspect the evidence themselves.

“Take some time to explore the city, speak to the people who live and work here, and get a sense of the direction in which Enugu is moving,” he told them.

That invitation fitted neatly into the larger argument of his address: in an age when a photograph can lie, a voice can be borrowed and a video can tell a story that never happened, journalism cannot afford to become a spectator sport.

The journalist must still ask the inconvenient question, knock on the next door and check what is behind the impressive claim.

The high point of the opening ceremony came when the Nigerian Guild of Editors presented Governor Mbah with a plaque in recognition of good governance.

The plaque may have been the ceremony’s visible trophy. But Mbah’s larger challenge to the editors was less ceremonial: return to the facts, test the claims and let the truth survive the politics.