Unpaid salaries: The Mobutu in media owners

As the Nigerian Union of Journalists continues its campaign for the payment of salaries of journalists owed for several months by various media houses, a renowned media scholar and columnist, Professor Olatunji Dare has written an interesting perspective on the matter. As part of his Tuesday Home and Abroad column in The Nation Newspaper of July 14 he wrote on what he subtitled Call it the Mobutu Principle. The piece is reproduced below: In Zaire, as the Democratic Republic of Congo was then known, word reached President Mobutu Sese Seko that enlisted soldiers who could not recall when they last received their salaries had mutinied. He summoned the mutineers from one military to his palace. “ I hear you are complaining that you have not been paid,” he said. The mutineers murmured in confirmation. Pointing at one of them, Mobutu asked,”What is that you are holding? “A rifle, Sir,” the subaltern replied. Mobutu pointed at another solider and put the same question to him. The same response: A rifle. “I have given you each an assault rifle and you are complaining about unpaid salaries,” Mobutu intoned with stunned incredulity. “What salary can be more assured than the rifle in your hand? The message was clear: Use what you have to get whatever you need. I will not be surprised if media people who have not been paid for months on end finally yielded to the temptation into which their employers had led them and used their columns and news holes and air time to fend for themselves, as indeed some of those selfsame employers had indeed urged them to do, I gather.