Ehn!…
wait o, let me guess, it must be a joke right? Of course we can’t be serious. Not
one, not two, not ten, in fact, not even a dozen, 13 able bodied men, sorry,
not just mere men, 13 members of the fourth estate of the realm (journalists)
were publicly insulted, assaulted and eventually arrested at the Ikeja magistrate
court, Kai, heaven wept!
Top profile journalists like Wale Busari, a judiciary
correspondent with Silverbird Television, was grabbed by the clothes and
dragged away. Ha! Everyone must hear this.
That is not all, as if that wasn’t enough, his resistance from
arrest led other judiciary workers in the area to clamp down on other
journalists, which included Francis Iwuchukwu of Peoples Daily, Henry
Ojeluh of PM
News/The News, Yejide Gbenga-Ogundare of the Nigerian
Tribune, Solomon Asowata of the News Agency of Nigeria and Akinwale Akintunde of Thisday.
Others were Yetunde Ayobami-Ojo of The Guardian, Nurudeen Oyewole of Daily Trust,
Shola Shoyele, Channels
Television;
Gbenga Shoyele, Nigerian
Compass; Ranti Thomas, Moment Newspapers; Bisi Onanuga, The Nation;
and Yemi Adebanjo, News Star newspapers.
To add insult to the most painful part of the injury, the camera
of the Channels
Television camera man, who was recording the incident got was
seized.
What really happened? how did it get to that point, that my
brothers, protectors of democracy and public interested were publicly treated
like criminals without any regard for the dignity of their profession of all
things at least. From the report, a female prosecutor, identified as Rose had raised
her voice and asked journalists who were along the court corridor to vacate the
place. An argument subsequently ensued between the prosecutor and the
journalists as the latter urged the prosecutor to be civil in her approach. Simple
ethical request! But Magistrate A.A Oshoniyi, whose attention was drawn by the
argument, made the simple request into a simply complex one by ordering the
immediate arrest of the journalists.
Although, following the intervention of the Court Registrar, Mr.
Ganiu Safari, and officials of the Nigeria Bar Association, Ikeja branch,
Police Area Commander, Mr. Noah Adesoyin, later released them, there are a
couple of dangling questions waiting impatiently for answers.
What on earth could be so bad that journalists who are supposed to
be the fourth arm of the government were treated like mere everyday criminals,
whatever is the situation, a simple caution and peaceful resolution will do,
not an arrest?
Again, another question is, will the release of these journalists be
the end of the public show of shame that the journalism was subjected to? One
key thing that the journalist Unions and Associations must understand is this;
that insult is not against the 13 journalists in their individual capacities,
it is an institutional insult on the profession, it is a signal of total
disregard for the media, it is a mess of everything we mean as custodians of
truth, it is a professional assault and must be treated as such.
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