Nigeria, August 16, 2016 – Lagos State Governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode on Tuesday enjoined media executives to always put national unity and security above personal considerations in line with established ethics and ethos of news reportage.
The Governor who spoke at the National Media Conference organized by the Nigeria Union of Journalists with the theme: “The Media and National Unity” held at the Obasanjo Presidential Library, Oke- Mosan, Abeokuta, added that they have a responsibility to ensure fair reportage based on best tradition of investigative journalism and objectivity.
Mr Ambode who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) Mr Tunji Bello also enjoined the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) as the umbrella body of all practicing journalists to champion the cause of ensuring that crime and criminality which constitutes infractions against humanity are so reported without prejudice to any ethnic group or religious belief.
While charging journalists to speak against crime and report it fairly and objectively, the Governor maintained: “we must speak against crime and report it fairly and objectively without playing to the sentiments that tends to threaten our fragile national unity”.
“Let us stop giving ethnic or religious colouration to criminals acts, because by so doing, we will be inadvertently promoting ethnic/ religious disaffection and by extension national disintegration”, he added.
He reiterated that the media as the Fourth Estate of the Realm holds a very strategic position in the crucial task of achieving national boding, cohesion and unity of the various diverse ethnic nationalities in Nigeria.
The Governor said that it should therefore be seen as a task that must be discharged with great sense of responsibility and patriotism and thanked the Union for staying the course of national unity through the discourse.
