By Emma Okonji and Nume Ekeghe
Former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and Presidential Aspirant in the 2019 election, Professor Kingsley Moghalu has accused the federal government of bias in its fight against corruption.
According to him, instead of fighting war against corruption in the pages of newspapers, the government should be able to investigate corrupt leaders, take them to court and jail them in order to prove to Nigerians and the entire world that it was fighting corruption.
Moghalu dropped the hint during The Niche 4th Anniversary Lecture held in Lagos yesterday, where he was the keynote speaker.
He said: “The recent controversy over the so called looters list published by one political party or one government, and another political party responding to it, is all confusion and lack of quality leadership. If you have a list of looters, you should be investigating them, proving your case in court and getting them jailed. That is what they should do and not making noise on the pagers of the newspapers and playing political football with corruption instead of fighting corruption.â€
When the fight against corruption is not legitimate, the society becomes even more divided because the general public will be compelled to believe that fighting corruption has become a tool to intimidate, suppress and to create a very bad image about the political opponent,†he added.
He called on Nigerians to vote for leaders with global view in the next general elections. According Moghalu, Nigeria needs to become a worldview state. Only then can journalism in Nigeria play a developmental role in line with the worldview.
“Without an overarching worldview, what happens is what we have at present, where several smaller views are holding sway in various parts of the country.Â
These narrow worldview snare driven by ethnic and religious considerations and most importantly, corruption and a lust for power.
“All the greatest countries of the world are driven by their worldviews, which are actively promoted by their media. The US, China, Russia and others all have well-funded and highly sophisticated media outlets that promote national unity at home and project staff power abroad, and there is no reason why Nigeria cannot do the same,” Moghalu said.
He called on the media to shelve hysteria journalism and focus on developmental journalism to always report the truth and educate the public in the right direction.
Reacting to the stolen mace saga which occurred in the upper legislative chamber some few days ago, the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, who was represented by Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, said the action was in collusion with the presidency to change principal officers in the Senate.
He said Senate was convinced that it was collusion because of the manner in which the thugs escaped with the Mace.
He however commended the media for the prompt and objective report on the stolen Mace.
“What the media did few days ago was to preserve democracy and we must preserve democracy at any cost because democracy is the only way we can solve our problems no matter the difficulties we have as a nation,†Saraki said.
Professor Ben Nwabueze who was also present at the anniversary, called on Nigerians to vote for credible leaders that had vision like Mughalu. He charged Moghalu to team up with visionary leaders to bring the much needed change that the country desired.
Managing Director of The Niche, Mr. Ikechukwu Amaechi assured Nigerians of the commitment of The Niche to uphold democracy in its reportage, even in the face of challenges.
Analysing the challenges in today’s media, the Managing Director of New Telegraph Newspapers, Mrs. Funke Egbemode decried media patronage among readers, and called for media support to keep the industry alive.
