Posted by By YINKA FABOWALE, Ibadan on
Any time soon, members of the correspondents' chapel of the Oyo State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) will be trooping to the polls to elect a new executive to run their affairs for the next three years.
Any time soon, members of the correspondents' chapel of the Oyo State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) will be trooping to the polls to elect a new executive to run their affairs for the next three years.
The tenure of the present executive led by Sola Adeyemo, hitherto of The Nation newspaper wound up a few weeks back, when a screening/election committee chaired by a veteran, Mr. Abiodun Afolabi was put in place to conduct the polls.
However, for the outcome of the election to be legitimate and valid, according to the union's books, it must be supervised by the state executive council whose officials must also be present at the inauguration of the new officers.
But the chapel would have none of that. In fact, the members do not want anything to do with the Wale Ojo-Lanre-led state executive, who they described as 'usurpers and illegal occupants of the state secretariat, Iyaganku.
However, it is not only the correspondents that feel this way. Their counterparts in the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State (BCOS), the Radio Nigeria equally share in this disaffection, which has seen them boycotting the activities including press conferences hosted by the council. Of the five chapels in the state, only the Ministry of Information and the Nigeria Tribune where the state chairman, Ojo-Lanre works still maintain allegiance to the state council. The Radio Nigeria is said to be polarized into two factions - the pro and anti Ojo-Lanre members.
Indeed, the BCOS chapel is currently on suspension for what the National Secretariat of the union in Abuja tagged 'anti-party activities", but which it rather sees as having been orchestrated by Ojo-Lanre.
But how did affairs degenerate into such bitter and sorry pass and how did Ojo-Lanre who rode to power on the crest of fervid popularity in his first term suddenly became ‘infamous' with his colleagues?
The crisis, Daily Sun investigations revealed, dated back to the November 2007 state election which saw his re-election for another term of three years.
Although he was returned unopposed, journalists in the aggrieved chapels were full of complaints, alleging that the electoral process was manipulated and that many of them were denied voting rights. An elder of the union, Afolabi said of the 480 strong members of the NUJ in the state, only 48 or precisely 10 percent took part in the election, and said most of these were non-practicing journalists.
'How can you justify that? Who then are the journalists, if you allowed the state commissioner of information and the PDP state publicity secretary to vote and you disenfranchised the bulk of bonafide professionals?", he queried, wondering how the correspondents chapel's chairman, Adeyemo, whose election about three years ago was supervised by the state same council should be prevented from voting.
Also, the chapel was unhappy that Dare Fasube, a photo journalist with Vanguard who it fielded for the post of financial secretary was disqualified by a panel which screened aspirants for the various offices.
The BCOS chapel nursed similar grudge against the state exco for the disqualified of Adekitan Adeagbo, who it sponsored to run for the position of secretary.
But the state chairman of the union, Ojo-Lanre, refuted the allegations, asserting that the election was done transparently and in line with the new constitution of the NUJ. According to him the people crying that they were disenfranchised were those caught on the wrong side of the enforcement of the constitutional provision, which stipulated being a registered and financial member of the union to vote or be voted for in any election. He explained that the new constitution emphasized attaining certain educational qualifications to be qualified to be registered and maintaining financial status, to participate in elections.
He said the minimum qualification for registration was degree or Higher National Diploma in Communication Studies, or a post graduate diploma in addition to a degree in any other discipline, which both aspirants lacked.
The constitution equally stipulates the payment of N20,000.00 by journalist with over 20 years experience and N10,000.00 for those with less years of experience. He added that those who could not vote were non-financial members.
But an elderly member of the Correspondents' Chapel, Mr. Dada Osasona, puckered a hole in this argument, querying why the union collected the membership fee from Fasube, only to disqualify him on the basis of professional qualification.
In Adeagbo's case, her chapel's chairman, Pastor Wole Oladele, noted that the same constitution provided for the encouragement of hitherto NUJ members, who were yet to obtain the paper qualification, by getting them enrolled in the International Institution of Journalists (IIJ) run by the union or similar institution. He, however, alleged that efforts to enroll her in the IIJ were frustrated by officials of the state council.
But Ojo-Lanre denied this. The NUJ boss explained that although he was aware that Adeagbo picked the admission form of the institution, it was only after she had appeared before the screening/electoral panel. It was thus a last minute, desperate bid to grab position, Ojo-Lanre said, disclosing that the form was eventually never submitted, 'even as I am talking to you now".
But a dissatisfied BCOS chapel petitioned the union's National Secretariat, for which it in turn got an indefinite suspension. The chapel sees Ojo-Lanre's hands in the development.
But a senior official of the union said the sanction was not for the protest letter as such, but for insubordination. 'You can imagine, because they had access to the television medium, they went on air and were giving the national executives ultimatum, when there were appropriate channels for seeking redress", the official said.
On the low number of voters, Ojo-Lanre said this did not invalidate the outcome of the election as the constitutional guidelines were duly followed, noting that in some states, the numbers were even fewer than those of Oyo State. He denied the allegation that the membership registration, which was crucial to the polls, was not But the BCOS journalists would appear to have more than the election grouse with Ojo-Lanre.
Their leader, Pastor Oladele said: 'Although, many of us supported him when he first came in, he has been anti BCOS, he has not deemed it fit to visit us as a chapel. The familiarity experienced under Soladoye Adewole (Ojo-Lanre's predecessor) is not there".
Specifically, Oladele criticized Ojo-Lanre for issuing a statement condemning the chapel's involvement in a strike embarked upon by public servants in the state to press for wage increase and ordering them back to work.
He said the state NUJ chairman's action jeopardized the collective interest of his members at the BCOS and Information Ministry, expressing shock that: 'when I asked him, (Ojo-Lanre) he told me he was entitled to his opinion. Now, even if he were to do that, he should at least have consulted with us".
Ojo-Lanre admitted to this charge, but explained that he intervened, because the strike was political rather than industrial.
But Oladele is not done yet. He accused the state NUJ chairman of being privy to the invasion of the state broadcasting station on May 23, last year.
The thugs were believed to have been sent by the veteran Ibadan politician, Chief Lamidi Adedibu, to overawe the then Governor, Senator Rashidi Ladoja, with whom he had fallen apart.
According to Oladele, Ojo-Lanre barely sympathized with the chapel, and only belatedly. 'The next we heard was on the eve of (Governor Adebayo) Alao-Akala's swearing-in. He (Ojo-Lanre) phoned some of us to ask us to give them engineering staff to install the equipment carted away by the thugs .
But reacting to this, Ojo-Lanre said he was not in town when the incident happened, but said on arriving Ibadan later, he went to commiserate with the chapel. He said he followed this up by issuing a press statement which was circulated to media houses including the Ibadan-based private radio station, Splash FM that was also attacked for airing the statement.
'It got to a stage, they wanted to kill me because of my stance on the BCOS matter. I was on the hit-list of the political interests involved. I've kept my distance from this government and said I would have nothing to do with them until they apologized for the BCOS attack", the NUJ chairman said.
He confirmed asking that the engineers be contacted to fix the equipment on a request by an anonymous phone caller. 'Till now, I don't know the person, but our own interest is seeing that the place is not destroyed, since we have our members there", he added.
Ojo-Lanre described as unfair and baseless the charge that he was working against the interest of the chapel.
He claimed credit for the emergence of a member of the chapel, Fatimat Abdulkareem as the President of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), by not only supporting her candidature but also campaigning for her.
Besides this, the NUJ boss said several of the chapel members had benefited from the medical and scholarship programmes of the council, while some of the officials had been sponsored to attend professional enhancing seminars.
Of Radio Nigeria chapel, on which his alleged attempt to foist an unpopular leadership factionalised the union, Ojo-Lanre said: 'They are with us. They have since begged and apologized. Even I have Matthew Ugbade from there as the Auditor in the cabinet".
As it were, embers of tempers which flared some months ago are still smouldering as the correspondents' chapel awaits a petition sent to the national executive of the union on the controversial election, even as it prepares for its own local election. 'The only route for peace is for the national body to look into our complaints, cancel the election and reschedule it under its supervision", a member said during the week.
But Ojo-Lanre has foreclosed making further overtures of peace with the ‘renegades', after thrice writing the chapels concerned for reconciliation. He declared: 'Some people want business as usual. But no, it has to be business unusual. I wrote the chapels thrice to meet and resolve the differences, but they shunned them. They have to go to school, they have to do this job as it should be done. They may be journalists, but they are not members of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ)".