MRA to APC PCC: Your Blatant Disregard for Journalists’ Rights Portends Grave Danger for Media

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The Media Rights Agenda (MRA) has said the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council’s (PCC) blatant disregard for the rights of a journalist performing a constitutionally-protected function at a time when the party was still seeking to persuade Nigerians to vote its candidate into the highest office in the land, portends grave dangers for the media should that candidate prevail in the elections.

The MRA made the remarks in a statement following the manner in which an ARISE NEWS Channel cameraman was prevented from covering a dialogue session between the APC’s presidential candidate, Senator Bola Tinubu and members of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG).

In a statement issued in Lagos, MRA’s Programme Director, Mr. Ayode Longe, stressed that the action of the party’s APC-PCC that was made public by its Director of Media Publicity, Bayo Onanuga, was bizarre, highhanded and a violation of the rights of the media.

Onanuga had claimed on Twitter that the ARISE cameraman was caught, allegedly clandestinely live-streaming Tinubu’s campaign event without authorisation and had accused him of being “on espionage mission.”

But Longe expressed outrage at the allegation and the justification for the unconstitutional action, describing it as ridiculous and baffling.

He expressed concern that, “the APC-PCC’s blatant disregard for the rights of a journalist performing a constitutionally-protected function even at a time when the party is seeking to persuade Nigerians to vote its candidate into the highest office in the land, portends grave dangers for the media should that candidate prevail in the elections.”

He added: “What authorisation does the journalist require to perform his professional duty of covering a political campaign event? How can a purely journalistic act by a cameraman from a television station filming a public political campaign event and beaming it live to a public audience be characterised as espionage?

“Should the cameraman have first made a public announcement that he is covering the event so as not to be accused of doing so clandestinely?”

Longe said he found it, “particularly bewildering because Mr. Onanuga, who issued the justification and made the accusation of espionage, spent a significant portion of his career as a professional journalist engaged in what came to be known as guerrilla journalism, for which he and the two media outlets, TheNews and Tempo magazines, where he served as an editor, were widely applauded, including by people like Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

“It is the worst form of irony that he is now attempting to condemn a journalist engaged in his professional pursuit as having committed a capital offence.”

According to Longe, “If this attitude is indicative of the vision of the party or its presidential candidate on the role of the media in the democratic process, then we shudder to think of what the future holds for journalists and the media community should this attitude and mentality be brought into the highest political office in Nigeria.”

He noted that it was the duty of the media to scrutinise and hold accountable public office holders and institutions as well as public figures, including political parties and candidates seeking public office, and to ensure that members of the public have as much information as possible about them, their programmes and their track records in and out of office, adding that the media cannot properly play their role in the electoral process if they are prevented from having access to public events which form part of the process.

Saying that anyone unwilling to be subjected to scrutiny by the media has no business seeking public office, Longe stressed that it was contrary to the code of journalism practice in Nigeria and everywhere else in the world that institutions or individuals who were being held accountable should be the ones to determine the media organisations or journalists that are allowed to hold them to account. 

He said journalists are entitled to and should be given the fullest access to all electoral events, and that such access should be non-discriminatory.  

He, therefore, urged, “the entire media community, regardless of the political sympathies that individual media professionals may have, to rise in unison to condemn the APC-PCC’s undemocratic action.”

Longe also called on the APC-PCC to publicly apologise to the cameraman and his media organisation and make a public commitment not to repeat such action in future.