Mr Integrity

Hostility Is Not Journalism. Mehdi Hassan Take Note. There is a clear difference between tough journalism and outright hostility. One serves the public interest. The other serves the ego of the interviewer. Unfortunately, the recent exchange between @mehdirhasan and presidential spokesperson @BwalaDaniel fell squarely into the latter category. What viewers witnessed was not a serious interview. It was an attempted public ambush. From the outset, the tone was aggressively confrontational. Questions were framed less as inquiries into governance and more as prosecutorial traps. Responses were repeatedly interrupted before they could develop. Clarifications were brushed aside. The atmosphere was unmistakable: this was not a conversation designed to inform viewers but a spectacle designed to embarrass the guest. Serious journalism does not operate this way. The craft of interviewing demands discipline. It requires the ability to ask difficult questions while still allowing the guest to articulate answers. It requires intellectual confidence strong enough to permit disagreement without descending into open hostility. Above all, it requires a commitment to substance over theatrics. That commitment was glaringly absent. Nigeria is currently grappling with a range of serious national challenges economic restructuring, security threats, governance reforms, and the complex work of stabilizing a large and dynamic democracy. A responsible interviewer would have used the opportunity to interrogate the administration’s policies on these matters: What strategies are being deployed? What reforms are underway? What outcomes should citizens expect? Instead, viewers were treated to an exercise in selective outrage and repetitive interruption. Even more troubling was the insinuation that political realignment is somehow illegitimate. Democratic politics is built on shifting alliances. Individuals and movements evolve. Former opponents become partners when national circumstances demand cooperation. This is neither shocking nor dishonorable; it is one of the defining characteristics of democratic political life. History provides countless examples. Leaders across the world have entered alliances with former adversaries when the demands of governance required it. To pretend otherwise is either intellectual dishonesty or a deliberate attempt to create sensationalism where none exists. But the deeper problem in the interview was tone. A journalist who openly ridicules or repeatedly attempts to humiliate a guest crosses an important professional boundary. The role of the interviewer is to hold power accountable not to behave like a courtroom prosecutor seeking a viral “gotcha” moment. When the pursuit of humiliation replaces the pursuit of insight, journalism loses its credibility. Audiences deserve better than that. They deserve interviews that illuminate policy, probe governance, and help citizens understand how leaders intend to confront the pressing challenges of the day. What they do not need is a theatrical performance in which hostility is mistaken for intellectual rigor. Respectful engagement does not weaken journalism; it strengthens it. Firm questioning does not require contempt. Professionalism does not require aggression. If global media wishes to retain its claim to moral authority as a watchdog of democracy, it must remember a basic principle: the goal of journalism is to inform the public, not to stage spectacles at the expense of civility and substance. The interview in question did neither. It was not a demonstration of fearless journalism. It was a demonstration of how easily the craft can slide into something far less admirable when provocation becomes the objective and professionalism is abandoned. Otunba Segun Showunmi The Alternative

Nyesom GovWike @ 58 Happy Birthday to a strong man, H.E. @GovWike. Grossly misunderstood, yet widely respected for the integrity of his words. I have followed you over time and observed that you are a man who keeps his word. May the Lord bless your new age and grant you good health. My regards to Milord and your boys. Many happy returns, Mr. Project. Otunba Segun Showunmi The Alternative.

"Attack us & discover that we are made of steel & that even though you may level our cities & spill our blood you will never break our firm resolve or shatter our irrepressible spirit & neither will you ever make us forget who we are & the proud & noble stock from which we come"- @realFFK. BOW TO GOD AND NOT TO TRUMP! (BEING THE KEYNOTE ADDRESS DELIVERED BY CHIEF FEMI FANI-KAYODE, THE SADAUKIN SHINKAFI, AT THE AKURE NBA CONFERENCE, 11th NOVEMBER, 2025) (femifanikayode.org/bow-to-god-and…) Mr. James Barnett, a PhD candidate at Oxford University, wrote the following in an essay titled 'Nigeria's Crisis Runs Deeper Than Just A War On Christians' for the Washington Post a few days ago. He wrote, inter alia, that, "Christians absolutely are being threatened & killed in parts of Nigeria. I can personally attest to it. But to frame Nigeria’s crisis entirely in that way badly distorts the complicated & tragic reality on the ground. Shaping U.S. policy around such distortions, especially when U.S. troops may be put in harm’s way, will not yield good outcomes. For several years, I lived & worked in Nigeria, studying its conflicts & interviewing different militant groups. I would never advise anyone to downplay the suffering of Christians who have experienced horrific attacks. I have seen & heard from many victims firsthand. But I have also seen the impact of similarly horrific violence across Muslim communities. To ignore the latter is to misunderstand what is really going on. Voices ranging from former Trump officials to the Vatican have cautioned against framing Nigeria’s complex insecurity in solely religious terms. Conflict has grown rampant in Nigeria under successive governments & the country now faces various militant groups pursuing different agendas. Lumping them all together & reducing their motives to anti-Christian animus is a mistake". Barnett is absolutely right. I sincerely hope & pray, for all our sakes, that someone in the White House is listening before it is too late. Permit me to begin this contribution with the following basic points. My belief is that we must eliminate every single terrorist & those that are sponsoring them in Nigeria. I do not believe in dialogue with them or forgiving them. I do not believe in negotiation with them. I do not believe in pampering them or managing them. I do not believe in rehabilitating them into the Nigerian Armed Forces. I believe in crushing them & sending them to their maker & in doing so quickly & decisively. This has been my position for the last 20 years & it will always be my position. Demons & vampires do not have any place in the land of the living & they have no right to life. The Bible tells us that there can be no fellowship between light & darkness & you either choose God or Belial: I choose God. Every single one of them, whether they be Boko Haram, ISWAP, Ansaru, Al Qaeda, JNIR, Lakurawa, the killer herdsmen, the kidnapping bandits or any other must be despatched to hell where they came from & our country must be cleansed of their filth & verminous evil. They are a cancerous plague that must be eradicated with clinical precision & by brute force. Outside of that I believe that genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes & mass murder of the most horrendous nature HAS been carried out by each of these groups in Nigeria over the last 20 years against Christians & I have been saying so for many years perhaps more than ANYONE else but today there is a difference & a caveat that makes the problem even more horrendous than it already is & which we ignore at our own peril. The caveat & difference, & this has been so for the last ten years & is a fact that many, including yours truly, were totally oblivious and blind to is the fact that their villainous & callous butchery was not limited to Christians alone: they butcher the Muslims too & they do so in equal if not greater numbers. (CONTINUED BELOW👇👇👇)

Imagine a deranged & sociopathic meglomaniac & tyrant, a recalcitrant and unrepentant schoolyard and dockside bully and a cheap and shameless godless scumbag like @realDonaldTrump threatening our country with violence, military action and invasion. What a nerve! Permit me to put the matter in context. A friend of mine sent the following words to me last night after reading his threat of war & military action. She wrote, "How I wish we can simply ignore this petulant man spewing utter childish rubbish all over the place. They can categorise us as they like, that is on them and there is nothing we can do OR ought to do about that. He should bring it on. Let them send their troops and let us see. The same Islamic Terrorists that THEY FUNDED to destroy us. Serves us right, We had the CHANCE to stand and be counted on the right side of history, before God with the genocide that is been committed by Israel and funded & supported by America. For all its worth, South Africa STOOD & REPRESENTED. We were nowhere to be seen or heard. AND YET look at this!" She concluded by saying the following, "it is not his fault or the Americans' fault, it is SOLELY ours. I pray this is a wake-up call for us as leaders, as a nation & Africans. These people are NOT our friends, have never been & will never be; neither should we tolerate having them as our masters, or elders!" I concur with this deeply courageous lady who has said it as it is. Frankly I couldn't have put it better myself. My response to her was as follows. "You are right. They are evil and, if he carries out his abominable threat, there will be a war. We shall not leave the country but we will fight it out with them. We behaved like cowards and allowed them to demonise us with no response. I do not know what is wrong with Nigerians but this will be the greatest challenge they have ever faced and maybe after it is all over they will appreciate the importance of having bold, articulate and courageous leaders & disavow themselves of their accursed cowardice, ignorance, pettiness, weakness, envy & complacency". I meant every word. Trump, a fascist & an associate of the globally recognized Hitler of the 21st century, @netanyahu, has refused to call the Israeli Zionist Nazis and the UAE-backed RSF butchers of Darfur, Sudan mass murderers and genocidal maniacs but he is calling our people the "killers of Christians" and is desperately trying to label our nation with the genocide tag and create a crisis in Nigeria. I am not surprised. Permit me to tell you why. In my essay titled "Christian Genocide and the Danger of Mischaracterisation" which was published one week ago I wrote, inter alia, the following. "Our Government must refuse to allow themselves to be hoodwinked by the words of middle-ranking American Governnent officials who are not members of the MAGA inner circle & who do not truly represent the very hardline and extreeme views of the right-wing Christian fundamentalist & anti-Muslim forces that Trump holds dear. If they really want to know what Trump is thinking but has so far refused to voice about Nigeria it would be wise for our Government to consider the words of @SecRubio, @SenTedCruz, @RepRileyMoore & Congressman Chris Smith far more than the soothing and encouraging words and expressions of support from "friendly faces" in the Trump administration who have deep ties with & a soft spot for Nigeria but who are not at the heart of the #MAGA power configuration like Trump's Lebanese brother in-law and Special Advisor on African Affairs, Massad Boulus, @US_SenAdvisorAF. American doublespeak & subterfuge is an art and we must never take them for their word or drink from their poisoned chalice. As the Bible says "their speech is as smooth as butter but war is in their heart". Sadly our Government did not pay heed to my words & instead took the comforting words of Boulus as the position of Trump. How wrong they were! (CONTINUED BELOW👇👇👇)

The US is not saying they will INVADE Nigeria. They are saying that if you can't stop these terrorists, we will step in. It's time for the Nigerian government to show leadership, wipe out the terrorists and protect the Nigerian people. #Endterrorism