A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORY OF NEWSPAPER PRESS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

This study adopted the historical study design and anchored on modernization and global media theories to critically examine the stated objective for establishing Iwe Irohin, the first newspaper published in Nigeria. The study explored other influences which were not apparent in the face of the objective realties that provided impetus for the publisher, Rev. Townsend, to start a newspaper at the time he did at Abeokuta (Nigeria), including their consequences on the newspaper press that emerged afterward. Study objectives include: to understand the “other” motivations for Townsend to arrive Abeokuta to establish a newspaper in 1859 (order than to “get the people to read and to beget the habit of seeking information through reading”); to understand how the context within which Townsend composed his motive provided impetus for him; to find out the consequences of Townsend’s motive and the context in which it was composed on the structure and performance of the newspaper press that emerged in its stead. The study relied on the data obtained from secondary sources, analyzed via narrative interpretation method and argued that Townsend’s belief was ethnocentric and his statement ideological. The study therefore concludes that the motive of the forerunner of the newspaper press in Nigeria was not altruistic as we were meant to believe, but was a function of a prevalent western socio-economic and ideological background (the context within which he was born and raised). Hence the newspaper press that emerged in its stead became not developmental in structure and performance, but reactionary, as the petite bourgeoisie proprietors aspired not to recover and steer the traditional society on the road to sustainable development, but rather to participate and carve a niche in the imperialist expansionist project that followed.