The Nigeria Union of
Journalists (NUJ) says it plans to submit to the National Assembly a Bill on
the elimination of impostors in the journalism profession.
The President of the
union, Mr Waheed Odusile, who said this in an interview with the News Agency of
Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday, in Abuja, added that the Bill would be submitted
after due consultation with all stakeholders in the profession.
According to Odusile, all members of the Nigeria Press Organisation need to
make their inputs before a comprehensive Bill is sent to the National Assembly
by April.
``We are making progress
on the Bill we want to take to the National Assembly.
``We have been trying to
get all stakeholders on board, because like they say, `a bird does not fly with
one wing’.
``All stakeholders in the
industry, especially the newspaper proprietors, the Guild of Editors and NUJ,
together we constitute the Nigeria Press Organisation.
``So we have met and we
have a draft of the bill that has been there for some time now; everybody has
gone through it, everybody is satisfied.
``So, we are just waiting
for a final meeting of the Nigeria Press Organisation to take a final decision
on it so that we will have a very comprehensive bill, which we will take to the
National Assembly.
``We have been in
constant touch with the Senate and they are waiting for us. I expect that
before the end of April it should be there.
``The last time we were
at the Senate, the Senate President promised that the chamber would have to
take the issue up this legislative year.
``So we want this Bill to
pass in this 8th senate and we are working towards it.’’
Odusile also said the
union would clamp down on people, who paraded themselves as journalists but
were not working for established media organisations in the country.
``There is a committee in
each council, mandated to monitor press conferences or where journalists gather
in large numbers for events, to actually fish out - I won’t even call them
quacks, I will call them undesirable elements - in our profession.
``At the national level,
we are about going into partnership with an ICT firm that would help us to do a
comprehensive and elaborate verification of our members.
``We want to do
biometrics of our members and put all the necessary information in their ID cards,
such that if you are a journalist, let’s say you are from Gombe and you find
yourself in Lagos and somebody has the cause to doubt whether you are a
journalist or not, once you have the ID card, they will take you to the NUJ
council.
``There will be a
computer there and if truly you are a journalist, it will be there, they will
see your details.
``There are laws for
setting up a newspaper or any media organisation.
``Once the law is
followed most of these fake mushroom papers will not come into the market.’’
Odusile said plans were
underway to invite online publishers to a dialogue on how to check the excesses
of the social media.
``We don’t want to be
agents that would restrict access to information or even information
dissemination. No! it is not what we intend to do, but we also want to
regularise activities.
``What we want to do with
the social media is first, we want to engage with them, we will be meeting with
the leadership of the online publishers, then, we will meet with bloggers.
``We will sit down and
see how best to enhance their practice of journalism, quote and unquote because
it is a problem all over the world; there is no strait-jacket way of dealing
with it.
``And we are hoping that
by the time our Bill gets to the National Assembly and probably it gets to the
public hearing stage, we will get contributions even from the social media
people.
``Maybe at that level the
law can incorporate them, so to speak.
``But we don’t want to
bother about them for now; we have a lot on our hands over regulation of the
orthodox media, so to speak.’’
He said bloggers and
individuals, who subscribed to online platforms were the culprits in the
dissemination of falsehood and inciting messages.
He added that online
newspapers do not cause problems as much as blogs and other social media
platforms, because newspaper publishers are journalists, who have chosen to
publish online. (NAN)
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