The Delta State Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) is currently polarised over mounting pressure on an online newspaper reporter, Miracle Chinedu Enuji of Asaba Metro news portal, to retract a story on the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Delta state or be sanctioned.
In the story captioned: “Indeed, We Have Failed – Delta State Govt”, the journalist had quoted the state commissioner of finance, David Edevbie as saying: “With the resources that we have and what we had over the last seventeen years, we should have developed as Lagos, Abuja or any other developed city in the country both in terms of infrastructure and mentally…I don’t know what happens to us.”
The online story emanated from a courtesy visit on the commissioner by the executive committee of the Delta NUJ on fund drive to host the 2017 Delta NUJ Press Week.
While addressing the NUJ delegation, led by the Vice Chairman, Comrade Patrick Ochei, the finance commissioner was said to have made the sweeping remarks that tend to have indicted successive PDP administrations in the state since 1999.
Shortly after the visit, the story went viral on online media portals, with Asaba Metro publishing a analysis of the commissioner’s alleged outburst, who himself is a principal government functionary since 1999 being same finance commissioner under the administration of James Ibori between 1999 and 2007.
Although he was not assigned any major role in Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan’s eight years as governor, he reclined into the political trenches and later emerged as the Urhobo Progress Union’s (UPU) candidate for the PDP governorship primary in 2014, coming a close second behind the incumbent governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa.
However, Edevbie has not made any official statement debunking the story, but the State NUJ leadership came hard on Asaba Metro online and its reporter, Miracle Enuji, awho the state NUJ leadership described as “a social media tiger.”
Delta NUJ went further to disown Mr Enuji, a member of the Delts State Indigenous Chapel, one of the sixteen chapels that composed the NUJ Delta State Council, threatening to forward his case to the state Disciplinary and Ethics Committee for casting the Union in bad light and ostensibly depriving it of envisage patronage from the finance commissioner.
The NUJ, in a statement signed by its Chairman, Mr Michael Ikeogwu, and Secretary, Mr Churchill Oyowe, said: “We were taken aback with the report by yet to be identified writer trying to attract unnecessary attention by creating friction between the Delta State Government and the NUJ Delta State Council, through deliberate misrepresentation and misinterpretation of facts…
“NUJ Delta holds in very high esteem the Commissioner for Finance, who has distinguished himself as an uncommon intellectual,” the statement added.
In a separate remark, the NUJ state secretary said: “It is only obvious that the boy Enuji Miracle is allowing himself to be used by forces looking for folders to launch their canons against government. It is unfortunate for him that his infantile disposition is being exploited to his destruction.”
But the management of Asaba Metro Online Portal stood with its story and called for proper inquisition into the veracity of the report. In a statement, the online newspaper explained that: “The said Op-ed was based on the statement attributed to Olorogun David Edevbie in several major newspaper publications a day earlier. We wish to state that the Editorial Team of AsabaMetro.com made up of seasoned journalists, legal practitioners and public affairs analysts, after due diligence, approved the said article for publication.
“The article was however the opinion of the writer and not necessarily that of AsabaMetro.com. The insipid, jejune and infantile outburst and hullabaloo by the Special Assistant to the Delta State Governor on Social Media as well as other reactionists is highly uncalled for,” it said.
