The Vice President, Kashim Shettima, has implored journalists to focus on objectively speaking truth to power rather than antagonizing the government.
Shettima urged members of the fourth estate of the realm to, as a matter of necessity, always strive to strike a balance between their allegiance to self and truth.
Naijaonpoint reports that the Vice President, who stated this on Saturday at a book launch in Abuja, said the goal must hinge on serving a greater good and deserving humanity.
“What must be spelt out is that there is a distinction between antagonizing a government and speaking truth to power. The latter is driven by a noble principle to serve a greater good and deserving humanity.
“The former, on the other hand, is usually a self-serving exercise that fades into futility, and that is not the end we should aspire to achieve with the information and ideas we labour to acquire and process in our line of work,” he said.
The Vice President pointed out that to build a nation that can best be described as an ideal state, the intellectual class, especially the journalists, must be allowed to be the nation’s conscience.
He reminded journalists that apart from speaking truth to power, the nation also needs them, as media professionals, to serve as the country’s conscience.
“No political leader, however sincere their intentions, can excel beyond the scale of the knowledge at their disposal, and this is particularly telling in our political space.
“While we need an army of courageous media professionals to speak the truth to power, we also need them to serve as the conscience of the political institutions and individuals who influence the evolution of society, including the questions of our collective survival,” he stated.
Shettima, however, observed that the real courage required to serve as the conscience of the nation lies in resisting compromise in one’s pursuit of truth.
“True courage is being able to tell the truth even in a congress of critics and bullies. The rush to partake in a smear campaign, even in the face of superior facts, is, of course, not an act of courage. This distinction sets courage apart from cowardice. It takes rare integrity to recognize the difference between the two “Cs”, he added.