Journalists in Bayelsa State have said they will boycott the coverage and monitoring of Saturday’s Presidential and National Assembly Elections holding across the nation.
Chairman of the State Council of the Nigeria Union of journalists, NUJ, Samuel Numonengi made this known while addressing journalists who besieged the press centre in Yenagoa to get their accreditation tags for coverage of the general elections.
According to him, out of over three hundred journalists whose names were presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for clearance, the electoral body only provide 80 press tags and kits leaving over two hundred and fifty journalists stranded and at the mercy of security personnel who have been directed to deal summarily with any truant without due accreditation on election day.
The NUJ chairman disclosed that when the issue was raised at Wednesday’s INEC stakeholders meeting which held in Yenagoa, the State Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr. Monday Tom Udoh and the Administrative Secretary of INEC, Mr. Lebaru Nduh, defended the electoral umpire on grounds of what was made available.
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“If your employer gives you instruction on what to do which would you obey? Your own directive or that of your organization? So journalists should be thankful to INEC for even providing them with that eighty press tags and kits for identification rather than ask for more “
Piqued by this response, the state council of the NUJ rose from an impromptu meeting after several consultations with aggrieved journalists and decided to boycott coverage and monitoring of Saturday’s polls unless INEC retraces its steps and provide journalists with adequate and sufficient security kits to ensure journalists safety and unhindered access to all units and collation centres across centres in the creeks of Bayelsa on election day.
Numonengi stated that while Edo State was issued two hundred and fifty press kits, Rivers State got over three hundred.
He wondered why Bayelsa with more journalists than most other states which got higher kits would be short changed insisting that such would not be tolerated as journalists under his watch cannot be undermined.
