Media
A leading Pro-Democracy group, Kwara Must Change has expressed outraged at continuous detention of some press men by the police through the order of Jumoke Gafar, an alleged family member of the attorney general of the federation and a former PPS in the immediate past administration.
Kwara Must Change noted that, the continuous detention of member of the press for doing their job amounts to an outright abuse of power, not only by the police, but also by Gafar and even by the judiciary, which ordered the remand of press men without due justification.
While reacting to news of the journalists detention, a member of Kwara Must Change, who is also an anchor of the groups popular radio programme “Eto Wa”, Lanre Babadudu maintained that, it is illegal and unlawful to detain journalists simply for publishing a press statement with adequate credit to the source and appropriate balance of story.
According to Babadudu, the only job of the press is to publish stories, adding that publishing a story with known sources should never be a qualification for detention.
Babadudu explained that, there’s no way the police and judge would justify their remand of journalists who simply provided platform to air a view, while those who originally own the views are walking free. It just doesn’t make sense, he said.
He noted that, the leadership of Kwara Must Change has explored alternative means of assisting the parties to resolve the issue for the past 8 days, but Jumoke Gafar, who is the architect of this oppression seems to be enjoying herself abroad.
“Let it be clear that Jumoke Gafar is the oppressor, not the victim. She’s the unjust fellow using her previlaged access to unjustly oppress journalists”.
Babadudu also noted that, the death of online personality, Mubarak Yusuf popularly known as Authority is not unconnected to this issue, because Mubarak was killed by cultist while visiting the detained journalist in police detention.
He called on the Attorney General of the Federation to call their family member to order and the state authorities to release the journalists without delay.
Recall that two journalists, Abdulrazaq Aiyelabegan, CEO of Just Event Online and Lukman, CEO of Satcomm Media has been held in illegal detention for the past 8 days.
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-September. 20 2023 @ 17:52 GMT |
Tags: Abdulrazaq Aiyelabegan Jumoke Gafar Just Event Online Kwara Must Change Lanre Babadudu
