By Professor Ishaq Akintola
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‎Faith-based civil liberties organization, the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has taken the media and elites to task on the raging debate on bus preaching.
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‎In a press release issued on Thursday, 20th August, 2026, the group’s Executive Director complained about the silence of both the media and Nigerian elites. He
‎warned that they must not fail Nigerians.
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‎”As the debate on the issue of preaching inside commercial buses raged, we have noticed the loud silence of both the media and Nigerian elites on the subject matter.
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‎”Ceteris paribus, panels upon panels would have featured ad infinitum on our various television channels and radio stations where the pros and cons would be extensively analysed to educate the public.
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‎”But surprisingly this has not been so. What we have are threats from the altars and the dogmatic positioning from clerics.  The usual enrichment and garnishing from the media and the elites are completely absent.
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“This is quite strange. Can the fourth estate of the realm claim not to know the correct position? Are Nigerian elites deliberately denying the reading public their eye-opening, engaging and refreshing articles? Why are they not giving us their opinions on bus preaching in their weekly columns and editorials? Why are they leaving the table to the clerics alone?
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‎”MURIC frowns at this complacency. We call upon the media to wake up to its responsibility. The role of the media is to educate, to entertain, to inform and to instruct while using those attributes necessary to play the roles, namely, truthfulness, knowledge, constructiveness and courage.
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‎”Coming from the Latin word ‘medium’, the media serves as a medium of communication. Isolating itself from this debate is therefore a disservice to Nigerians. The absence of the media from the table means we are not communicating.
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‎”Three of those four fundamental roles are being abandoned here. Nigerians need to be educated, to be informed and to be instructed on the burning issue of bus preaching. The media and the elites must therefore speak up. Silence is not an option. They cannot claim not to know the truth. They cannot claim not to know the ideal.
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‎”It was Mahatma Gandhi who said, ‘Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly. Corroborating the Indian leader, Albert Einstein declared, ‘The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them doing nothing’.
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‎”The Nigerian media cannot afford to stand akimbo while such aggressive debate is going on. It is about the right to enjoy a quiet ride.
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“The aloofness of the media in this conversation has created a yawning gap at the table. By now we should have been witnessing fiery discussions on television and radio on bus preaching. It ought to be so. It is an obligation and its absence points to a failure, a social decay and an unnecessary exhibition of prejudice.
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‎”Warning against prejudice in the journalism profession, Walter Cronkite said, ‘It is our duty to be sure that we do not permit our prejudices to show. That is simply basic journalism’. But Leslie Moonves contended that ‘Journalism has changed and partisanship is very much a part of journalism now’.
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“Yet we know where the Nigerian press is coming from. Rev Henry Townsend who introduced Christianity to Nigeria in 1842 was the same man who started the first newspaper ‘Iwe Irohin Yoruba’ in Nigeria in 1859. This may be why many journalists feel a symbiotic nexus exists between them and a particular religion. However, only those who succeed in severing that invisible spiritual umbilical cord can lay claim to professionalism.
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‎”So far the Nigerian press has not been known to sit on the fence in matters like this. They have always been outspoken. We must therefore ask: who is gagging the press on the issue of bus preaching?q
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‎”We say ‘No’ to selective articulation. It was Benjamin Franklin who spoke of being an ‘impartial printer’. Objectivity is the golden norm of journalism. The media must speak out boldly.
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‎”Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, ‘Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.’ Martin Luther King Jr rounded it up  with the words, ‘There comes a time when silence is betrayal’. The press must not fail the Nigerian  people”.
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‎Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC).
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