The Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of THISDAY Media Group and ARISE News Channel, Nduka Obaigbena, has challenged the Federal Government to put the four government-owned refineries in the country to work, to checkmate the oil mafias in the country.
Obaigbena, speaking as the Chairman of the All Nigeria Editors Conference in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, said, said, “If we are going to use whatever means to deal with the oil mafias, we should keep our refineries alive. If you say you want to stop monopoly, then our four refineries must work. Let those four refineries compete with Dangote Refinery.
“We challenge the Minister of Information and Bayo Onanuga to get the refineries working. Everybody is feeling the pain in the country. The time is hard but Nigerian journalists are harder, so you have to be tough to cope with the time.
“I can see that the future can be better if we give Tinubu’s reform a face, we should support the reform but we must make sure that the vulnerable are supported.
“We are ready for the change but the first step is to put our house in order. Let us fix Nigeria. That is the first thing to do and let’s also work hard to ensure that we also protect our industries.”
The President of the Nigeria Guild of Editors, Mr Eze Anaba, said the availability of resource materials was the biggest threat to media survival in Nigeria.
Anaba said decisions made by editors were critical to national development, adding that national economic growth directly influenced every sector, including the media.
He said: “Media organisations face mounting pressure to adapt to modern trends while staying financially viable and maintaining journalistic integrity.
“Now, we thought the only challenge facing the media would be adapting to modern trends, but the biggest threat to media survivors today is the availability of resource materials to produce our papers or to broadcast on our TV stations.”
Former governor of Ogun State, Chief Olusegun Osoba, said there was a need to set a committee to look into the crisis in the Nigerian Union of Journalists over the issue of tenure for the present leadership, saying the editors remained the only united group after newspaper proprietors that could resolve the crisis.
Osoba said: “Before you leave, I want you to set up a committee to look into the crisis brewing in the NUJ.
“They are supposed to hold their annual conference, but some people are saying that the president has overstayed his tenure and they took him to court. You are the only united group after the NPAN to intervene in that crisis brewing in the NUJ.”
The keynote speaker, Dele Kelvin Oye, who is President of the National Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture, said one of the greatest challenges confronting the nation was the mismanagement of oil and gas resources.
Oye also highlighted how the Federal Government was making very impactful decisions without stakeholder involvement and poor management of the exchange rate as some of the issues bedevilling the economy.
He said he was not fighting anyone, but urged participants at the conference to question issues.
“You are editors. You should be asking questions, especially if what is happening is detrimental to national development,” he said.