Press Release
The Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Imo State Council has observed with great dismay and severe pain the clearly orchestrated as well as ill conceived media attack hauled at the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC President, Comrade Joe Ajero by a group called, Imo Patriots’ League.
The Imo Patriots’ League, with its convener, Onwuasonya FCC Jones, had addressed the press whereupon it opened and tailored unguided attacks on Ajero. FCC Jones and his league of anti-Ajero and their co-travellers in their despicable antics, without any recourse to the facts on ground took the NLC President to the cleaners, insulting, abusing, deriding and calling an already traumatized man all manner of unprintable names.
The full and glaring flaws of that condemnable media fire stroke against Ajero notwithstanding, what actually embarrassed and even shocked us, the executive and members of Imo State NUJ, was the crude importation and surreptitious insertion of our hallowed professional organization into that ill-advised, miscalculated, half-baked and absolutely irrelevant press release by Ifeanyi Nwanguma who signed off as Imo NUJ chairman. All this smacks of semi-literacy or illiteracy of the satanic schemers.
By supporting the action of the Imo State Government against its prey and victim – Joe Ajero – who has suffered untold pain and humiliation as a result of alleged State-sponsored abduction and brutalization, Ifeanyi Nwanguma has practically confirmed that he works and functions for the current state actors and of course, deficient of a good conscience. This is purely antithetical to the ordinances as well as the professionalism and intellectual soundness journalism and journalists stand for.
For the records, the press being the Fourth Estate of the Realm presupposes that journalists are not meant to function either for or against the government or any other body for that matter. Rather, the press, with the journalists at the driver’s seat are composed to serve all for the purposes of informing, educating and entertaining the public without fear, prejudice or emotional imbalance.
The malicious attack on Ajero by the police and thugs allegedly sponsored by state actors is really regrettable. If Ajero had, in the eyes of his ruthless attackers, contravened any established law, the best approach would have been to either take him to court or extend a police invitation to him. Ajero’s attack was an affront and infringement on his fundamental rights as a citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Therefore, we totally disassociate ourselves and our noble Imo NUJ Council from the infantile press conference by Imo Patriots’ League Group by which our association was dragged through the mud. Enough of this impunity.
Sign:
Comrade Precious Nwadike
Chairman
Mr Ori Martin
Secretary