Time for a recount?
- 23 Apr 07, 09:31 PM
Does the audience care about the Nigerian election? Have we done too much on the French election - it was a first round after all and we won't know who the new president of France will be for another fortnight?
Two questions I have been asked over the past couple of days.
Last Friday on The World Tonight (listen here) we devoted a whole programme to the two elections. Robin Lustig was in Abuja, Jackie Hardgrave in Paris, and the programme was presented out of the two capitals with no input from London. It was technically ambitious as neither were in studios. Jackie was in a restaurant in Paris and Robin was on a hotel roof in Abuja. But did the stories merit the airtime and resources we devoted to them?
The French election is easier to answer. France is our next door neighbour and there are two quite different visions of the future on offer. It's also a campaign that was quite unpredictable up to the last minute. Added to which, whoever leads France will have a significant impact on the future of the European Union and that has an impact on people's lives at home.
The Nigerian election was more predictable because the candidate of the governing party was expected to win, so the election result itself was less interesting for being more predictable. The reason we sent Robin Lustig there was to report on the state of Africa's most populous and arguably most wealthy and powerful country, so we used the election as an opportunity to do this - it gave us, in journalists' jargon, 'a peg' to do the story.
One of the main things Robin did was to report from the northern city of Kano, which has a mixed Muslim/Christian population and is a good place to illustrate the issues facing the country in terms of potential wealth, everyday poverty and corruption.
If elections equal democracy (which not everyone accepts they do) and Nigeria held an election (however flawed according to observers) and manages to pass power from one elected president to another for the first time in the country's history (punctuated as it is by military rule), this is an important moment for the future of Nigeria and by extension Africa, which the British taxpayer via the government is committed to supporting with substantial debt relief and aid.
I hope our audience are finding it interesting and worth the time we devoted to it. If you would like to hear more, Robin has also been presenting for 大象传媒 World Service while he's there, and was also on the Today programme on Saturday (listen here).
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
