By Solomon Odeniyi & Deborah Tolu-Kolawole
The President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Christopher Isiguzo, on Monday reiterated the position of stakeholders in the media towards the National Press Council (Amendment) Bill currently before the National Assembly.
He said a stakeholders’ meeting was important to settle the grey areas.
He added that any regulation that tended towards the control of the media by the government would be resisted.
Isiguzo spoke while featuring on Sunrise Daily, a programme on Channels Television, monitored by one of our correspondents.
He said, “From the NUJ’s perspective, we did not really object to that public hearing; but from the Nigeria Press Organisation’s perspectives, made up of the Newspapers Proprietors of Nigeria, the Nigeria Guild of Editors and the Nigeria Union of Journalists, we are opposed to the planned amendment. We told the National Assembly that the matter was of contention in court and it would be sub-judice to discuss.
“I do not think anybody is allergic here if you look at the issue in court, we said ‘allow the practitioners and stakeholders to regulate themselves.’
“In Ghana, the person heading the press council is a journalist. So, when you allow us to regulate ourselves, it is a lot easier. If you look at the proposed amendment bill, you will see that they want to criminalise a journalist.
“For instance, if a journalist breaches the ethical code, you want him to go to prison; we said no. There are ways that we can sanction the persons as practitioners.
“We can suspend the person and we can also get the NUJ to strike out the membership of such an individual instead of sending the journalist to jail. These are the grey areas we feel should be struck out in the amendment.”
Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer of Media Career Development Service, Lekan Otufodunrin, said the amendment bill and the Decree 4, enacted by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), in 1984 during his regime as military Head of State, are the same.
During an interview on Monday with one of our correspondents, Otufodunrin said the two pieces of legislation were meant to stifle the press in Nigeria.
Otufodunrin said, “Decree 4 was during the military regime and even then, it was heavily criticised by journalists and this led to the imprisonment of some prominent journalists.
“The interesting thing then was that when Buhari came in, he said he was going to tamper with press freedom and he did. This Press Bill, as well as the NBC Bill are just indications that this government seems determined to stifle the press freedom we have.
“It is quite unfortunate that this is coming under a democratic system of government. They can amend law because the laws have been in place for years and it is believed that events must have overtaken them, but what they are proposing is totally different.
