News

Jonathan fighting a

lost battle against

media -APC

The All Progressives Congress has condemned

what it called the unreasonable siege on

newspapers across the country by security

agencies. The party warned that the President Goodluck

Jonathan’s administration, by tampering with

press freedom, had taken on a battle it could

not win. In a statement in Lagos on Sunday by its

Interim National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai

Mohammed, the party said the President failed

to learn the lessons of history that the Nigerian

media could neither be intimidated nor

suppressed by anyone. APC reminded the President that “all those who

tried to do so in the past lived to regret their

actions.” It wondered why a government that was being

asked to diligently prosecute the war on terror

was instead vehemently waging a war on the

media and using the security agencies to

interfere with the country’s democracy. APC said, ”Had the government pursued the

insurgents, who are killing and maiming

Nigerians with the same vigour with which it had

descended on the media, the war against terror

would have been long over.” It wondered what kind of “weapons that the

small newspaper distribution vans could be

used to ferry that cannot be conveyed by other,

bigger vehicles that move around the country

undisturbed.” The party described as disingenuous and

ridiculous the explanation that an intelligence

alert was responsible for the “shameful and

unacceptable clampdown” on the media, and the

platitude that the Jonathan administration held

the media in high esteem. It added, ”Even if one believes the

administration’s babble that President Jonathan

holds the media in high esteem, how can that

be justified by the indignities being meted out to

the media under his watch? How does the so-

called intelligence report justify the arrest of media workers, detention of distribution vans

and the impounding of newspapers? How does it

justify the restriction of newspaper circulation?

How does it justify an administration’s efforts to

tamper with fundamental rights guaranteed by

the nation’s constitution? ”With the clampdown on the media, the

Jonathan administration has opened a new but

dangerous flank in its war against Nigerians. “First, it was an attempt to stifle the freedom of

assembly and the freedom of speech when a

yeoman Commissioner of Police, Joseph Mbu,

tried but failed to ban peaceful protests in

Abuja. The outcry against the obviously-

orchestrated ban on peaceful protests had barely died down when the government moved

to stifle press freedom. But it is a lost battle.”