Kogi APC Primary: Leave Journalists Out Of Your Mucky Political Water – NUJ Tells Adeyemi, Other Losers
The leadership of the Kogi State chapter of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), has cautioned politicians in the state to leave journalists out of their politicking by deliberately impugning on the professional integrity of journalists and media houses.
It particularly advised politicians to use the prescribed ways of seeking redress whenever the outcome of elections are not favourable to them rather than resorting to blackmail and attempting to pull everything down.
The NUJ specifically tasked the governorship aspirants on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who lost at the primaries, to appreciate and understand that journalists are not and will never be their snags as they go in search of solutions to their problems.
The NUJ noted that since the conduct of APC governorship primary in Kogi State, some of the aspirants that lost in the exercise that are presently preoccupied with how to bring into disrepute the conduct of the party primary by claiming that no election held anywhere but that results were only cooked and announcements made.
Senator Smart Adeyemi on Saturday in Abuja, led three other governorship aspirants on the platform of the APC to condemned the party primary alleging that election did not take place as votes were only awarded.
But, in its reaction, the Chairman of the NUJ in Kogi State, Mr. Adeiza Momoh-Jimoh, said that it is on record that journalists in Kogi State went to the field on the APC Election Day and monitored the process across the state.
Momoh-Jimoh said that audio, videos and pictorials evidence of the exercise were gotten from the field by journalists while monitoring the process, adding that reports were sent to various media houses, based on their observations on the field.
In his words; “Our members were fair enough to report places where voting started early and some other places where there were delay in arrival of electoral materials and officials as it’s typical of Nigerian elections.
“Having monitored and reported the process in our media outlets, journalists converged at the collation center at the State APC secretariat in Lokoja and stayed up till 3am in the morning of Saturday to also cover the collation and declaration of results.
“For any aggrieved politician to now assert that all these sacrifices done by journalists amounted to colluding to declare concocted results, is not just far from the truth but, showing disrespect for journalists and their media organisations.
“For us at the Kogi NUJ, we stand by the reports of journalists as published in their various media outlets on the conduct of the election.
“We want to use this medium to advise our politicians to use the prescribed ways of seeking redress whenever the outcome of elections are not favourable to them rather than resorting to blackmail and attempting to pull everything down,” he said.
The NUJ chairman urge journalists in the state to continue to uphold the ethical standards of the profession throughout the election season and beyond.
