By Suleiman Dogara
If there’s one thing some newspaper editorials and analyses by some self-appointed commentators promise is uncourted controversy – and some shocking revelations of unprofessionalism and intellectual poverty while you are at it.
Case in point: a piece of junk analysis simply credited to “editor” and published on March 21, 2021 edition of Thisday newspaper.
The writer or commentator or analyst talks about Kogi state governor, Yahaya Bello, has been playing “stupid and constituting humongous nuisance since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic last year.”
One is rather shocked that a public affairs commentator would choose to deploy such uncomplimentary phrases spiced with words fit for the gutter against a leader of the people.
Love him or hate him, Yahaya Bello is governor of Kogi state, duly elected by a landslide majority of the state’s voters and still enjoying majority support.
Without constructively stating any case against Yahaya Bello, the writer simply vented his pent-up personal jealousies of the man’s successes at a young age which he appears to suggest is not ripe for leadership, perhaps favouring older men with power.
It is worrying that notwithstanding the well-known guidelines for the media against breaches of decorum and etiquette, and the and the ditorial policies and restraints imposed by ordinary decency and sanity, Thisday newspaper should allow space for such fringe writers to besmear its credible image.
As friends of the press, we expect the proprietors of the various media outfits, along with their professional bodies like NUJ, Nigerian Guild of Editors and NPAN to regulate what political jobbers throw on their platforms and abide by their own rules and etiquette regarding the dissemination and reportage of news, commentaries, analyses and opinions.
We remain hopeful that they would wake up to being more restrained in accommodating such articles that instantly betray the writer’s instability as his intrinsic bias kept becoming apparent from the first line to the last.
Dogara, a media observer, wrote from Abuja
