Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari has been urged to invest massively in the management of information and stop being stingy, in order to achieve the desired expectations on reportage.
Prof. Taofiq Adesina Abdulazeez of the Department of English from the University of Abuja made the call while presenting his lecture titled “2019: Our Role” at the second National convention of the Muslim Media Practitioners of Nigeria (MMPN) held at the weekend in Abuja, the Federal capital territory.
Abdulazeez, who was the keynote speaker at the occasion observed that the press were not well mobilised inspite of their belief that the government is performing.
According to him, the media practitioners are always the devil’s advocates in all crises saying that pandemic ignorance of the educated and uneducated masses will always conspire with the endemic poverty of the media practitioners to make objectivity, truth and justice impossible.
“The fraudulent politicians are desperate to enrich the poor journalists to broadcast evil and propagate their malignant bitterness as naturalized realities”, he said.
He described electioneering components of Democracy as a gambling activity where contractors and looters of the people’s wealth stake their money in the hope of winning in an election and having access to the people’s wealth as dividend of their investment.
He reminded journalists of their accountability to Allah as they strive as media practitioners in a democratic dispensation especially during transition.
He however showed dissatisfaction on the non availability of access to information to the people saying that information at the journalists disposal could be used to project the performance of government.
While urging practitioners to ensure doing the right thing to save humanity, Abdulazeez explained their role as it covers education, advocacy, mobilization, promotion, sponsorship and tactical and non partisan for politicians with integrity as well as transformation of media associations.
Declaring the convention opened, the Sultan of Sokoto, his Eminence Alhaji Saad Abubakar urged practitioners to increase their efforts in good raportage.
The sultan, who was represented by the Emir of Jiwa, Alhaji Idris Musa charged practitioners on investigating a story properly before disseminating it to the people to avoid creating crises and instability in the country at large.
Earlier in his speech, the national President of the association , Alhaji AbdurRahman Balogun pointed out that corruption is not limited to the politicial or financial corruption but moral acorruption and the likes which must be addressed.
He decried that lack of good leadership and the fear of Allah have caused the nation a great fortune and that all great nations excelled as a result of the visions of what their leaders imbibed by their followers.
“With the coming of President Muhammad Buhari in 2015, there is a ray of hope with the renewed campaign against corruption and good leadership”, he said
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