FG Blames Media For Nigeria’s Bad Image
The Federal government has said that the “image problem Nigeria is suffering from today is mostly due to the unflattering portrayal of the country by the country’s media.”
Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who disclosed this yesterday in Abuja, during the renaming of News Agency Nigerian (NAN) headquarters building after its late chairman Alhaji Wada Maida.
Mohammed said it may seem obvious and trite, but for any professional, including a journalist in Nigeria to be able to carry out his or her responsibility at all, the nation must first exist, in peace.
‘In other words, if the country goes down, all professionals and everybody go down. It is that stark, and this is why I want to use this platform to appeal to our media to put Nigeria first,’ Mohammed said.
The minister said if one picked up most newspapers, watched most television stations or listened to most radio stations in the country, one will be right to think Nigeria is a country at war.
While acknowledging that there were challenges in the country, especially in the area of security, Mohammed however said the Buhari administration had not only acknowledged the challenges, it is earnestly tackling the challenges.
‘A good example is the decisive manner in which our gallant troops are tackling the banditry in the North-West or the way they are combating the terrorists in the North-East. Our security agencies have also successfully tackled the separatists in the South-East and South-West and the militants in the South-South. Unfortunately, these efforts have only been perfunctorily reflected in the reportage of the security challenges that we face. This is not only unfair, especially to those who are sacrificing their lives to keep us safe, it is unpatriotic.
Speaking further, he said when recently hosted some members of the Nigerians in Diaspora Organization (NIDO) UK Chapter, who visited him in his office here in Abuja, they told him that some of their colleagues who would have come to Nigeria for their programme, tagged ‘’A Week in and For Nigeria’, in July, did not come out of fear of the security situation in Nigeria.
He said, “Those who made the trip said they travelled to their hometowns across the country and returned to Abuja safely. If Nigerians in the diaspora can be afraid to come to their country, imagine how foreigners, including investors and tourists, will feel about coming to the country.”
‘Whatever image problem Nigeria is suffering from today is mostly due to the unflattering portrayal of the country by the country’s media.
‘Even when some media organisations report fake news, they never have the decency to retract such stories and apologise. They simply move on as if nothing has happened.
‘We are not saying the media should not report on the security challenges we face. All we are saying is: Be fair and report accurately the efforts being made by the state and federal governments to tackle the challenges. Even if you don’t want to encourage the men and women in uniform fighting to keep us safe, please don’t discourage them with negative reporting. The security challenges we face today will be successfully tackled and Nigeria will not cease to exist, despite the antics of naysayers,’ Mohammed added.
Mohammed stated that, ‘The Federal Government’s decision to approve the proposal was not difficult, upon realising the role played by Alhaji Wada in making NAN the respectable agency that it is today. A man who was everything from Zonal Editor to Foreign Correspondent to Editor-in-Chief to Managing Director to Board Chairman, a man who built this glistening NAN headquarters edifice deserves to be immortalised by the organisation he served so well in his lifetime.’
He commended the management and staff of the NAN for coming up with the idea to immortalise the late Maida.
