17th ANEC: Ekpu Urges Media, Other Stakeholders To Play Roles In Tackling Security Challenges
THE Chief Executive of May 5 Media and Chairman of the 17th All Nigeria Conference of Editors, Mr. Ray Ekpu has said that the security situation in the country was being managed as if Nigeria was a running a monogamous culture.
Ekpu who was speaking on the security situation in the country at the 17th All Nigeria Conference of Editors ANEC holding at the Nigeria Airforce Conference Centre Kado Abuja yesterday, identified this as one among six other anomalies on the security situation of the country.
He elucidated other anomalies to include the fact that governors as just chief security officers of their states are only in name rather than the true position of things, adding that in many states, there are many forms of local policing, yet the Federal Government has refused to accept the reality of state police.
According to him, a worse situation is the fact that the All Progressives Congress (APC) government set up a panel, chaired by the Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai on restructuring but has failed to do anything on it, in addition to what he called the anomaly of the South West, South East and South South setting up Amotekun, Ebube Agu ( that of the South South yet to be named), while the North East, North West and North Central that are the epicentres of insecurity have taken any step in that direction, asking, “Are they happy with the situation? I don’t know.”
Furthermore, he stated that the sixth anomaly is the use of the Army as law enforcement officers; a situation where the army arrest suspects and hand over to the police to prosecute, noting that it should not be so. And the seventh to be that while the states provided more than one third of fund needed for funding for the Police, the Federal Government still holds powers with two hands, believing states cannot run state police and called on the media, civil society, lawyers, labour and other relevant stakeholders to intervene to tackle such politically power drunk government officials.
In his keynote presentation, the Publisher of Premium Times, Mr. Dapo Olorunyomi emphasised the need “for the upper deck on our country’s policy making team to a needful conversation on the challenges bedevilling the state of the nation and the critical role of accountability journalism in the debate about possible outcomes, adding that no other time, in recent memory, is such a conversation so urgent and so important.
According to him, “When we gather at settings like this, we owe it a responsibility to ourselves and our community to always clarify what it means to be a journalist. It is the basis of a lot of confusion and when people try to hold us to standards that are unrelated to our calling, it is partly our fault that this point has not been keenly discussed as it should.
“The first confusion is of course that of taxonomy. We are media actors in a broad sense but narrowly and specifically only journalists in an ontological sense. All journalists are media actors, but the reverse is not the case. Not all media actors are journalists. When politicians therefore see every person with a smart phone and a grudge, they call them media people. “Interestingly they are right but since by media people they also assume they are journalists, that is why they are wrong,” he added.
Earlier, the President, Nigeria Guild of Editors, Mr. Mustapha Isah noted that the media cannot afford to be aloof at this time of national crisis, adding, “We have to be part of the solution to insecurity, which has become an existential threat to this great nation.
He posed a critical question of whether the media should play up occasiona successes of insurgents and bandits against our military and other security agencies or deliberately give adequate publicity to the gains if the military personnel against “the bad guys disturbing the peace of the nation” or give more attention to the voices of those calling for division or those calling for unity.
Media gurus slated who spoke at the event include Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP Newspaper, Azu Ishiekwene; Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Malam Mele Kyari; representative of the IGP, Mr. Frank MBA, The Director-General of Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), representative of the Director-General of Directorate of State Services (DSS), Mr. Peter Afunanya the President, Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), Malam Kabiru Yusuf, among many others.
Highpoint of the event with the theme, ‘’Media in Times of Crises: Resolving Conflict, Achieving Consensus’’, was the unvieiling of the book titled “Uneven Steps : The Story of the Nigerian Guild of Editors authored by Lanre Idowu and reviewed by James Akpandem.
