DOM ZIMEGAPI
The brewing crisis that hit members of the Rivers state Correspondents’ chapel of Nigerian Union of Journalists Rivers state Council escalated on Tuesday May 22, 2018 during the Media Chat held by Nyesom Wike, Rivers State Governor to mark his third year anniversary as governor, when Simeon Nwakaudu, Special Assistant on Electronic Media, overrode the Commissioner for Information, Barrister Emma Okah as he evicted Philip Ezuma, the Port Harcourt Bureau Chief of The Pilot Newspapers in what he called “not to encourage disobedience” in the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigerian Union of Journalists Rivers state Council on ongoing Industrial Court case pending at Port Harcourt judicial Division which late Justice Auwal Ibrahim heard on February 12th, 2018 and adjoined to March 1st, 2018 before he died from exhaustion on February 25th 2018.
During the Media briefing Mr. Nwakaudu reportedly told Ezuma that if he fails to leave from the venue that, he Simeon Nwakaudu would have cause to call in security operatives to have him removed from the hall which was billed to host the Media Chat with the governor, fixed for 7.30am at his Table Tennis Court Arena inside Government House, Port Harcourt.
Trouble began for the Pilot Bureau Chief when he arrived at the Government House Gate at about 7am and found to his chagrin that a staff under his Bureau, Alice Onukwugha, was given approval to cover the media chat, his allotted beat, over his head. He made effort to address the anomaly before the commissioner for Information who acquiesced that the development was anathema to natural process and offered to correct same. www.towncrier,ng sources gathered that the Commissioner For Information and Communications Barrister Emma Okah took Ezuma to the venue embedded inside government house and requested Mrs. Alice Onukwughaa junior staff with The Nigerian Pilot Newspapers to leave the venue for her boss’s stead.
But Onukwugha, whose husband is the abrasive Acting Secretary of the Nigerian Union of Journalists Rivers State Council, Mr. Anayo Onukwugha hastily called on Ernest Chinwo, whose chairmanship of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the NUJ was contrived in a garrison regime – now a subject of litigation at the National Industrial Court of Nigeria, Port Harcourt Judicial Division; to intervene. Mr. Chinwo sought the support of the Special Assistant to Governor Wike on Electronics Matters-Mr. Simeon Nwakaudu who bashed on Mr. Ezuma and ordered his eviction in what has been described as an abused of protocol as the Commissioner for Information and Communications is a top government functionary that sits at the Rivers State Executive Council Meetings. His orders are first among equals. As a Media Assistant, Nwakaudu falls shy of a coordinate equal to Okah. He is but a personal Staff of the governor, whose employment is at his pleasure to decide when to dispense with. Media Commentators say the Media Aide to Wike has shown crass bias as the media chat was one of the very elaborate first his principal was having with the press in three years and ought to have been open to all practicing journalists in Rivers State.
They contended that by putting himself forward in a matter that is purely a union affair; the Media Aide has put the government in a precarious position as taking sides in a matter that is before the court of competent jurisdiction, when neutrality would have been the wise decision. Though Mr. Nwakaudu did not explain what he meant by’ not to encourage disobedience’ the baring of eleven members of the Rivers state Correspondents’ Chapel Nigerian Union of Journalists from attending the Media Chat posit that Wike’s government may have inadvertently encouraged Mr. Ernest Chinwo to perpetrate the misdeeds he and his cohorts carried out in the chapel’s aborted election supposed to have been held on Friday, 26th of January 2018.
It is instructive to conclude that the Commissioner for Information and Communications Barrister Emma Okah knows the debacle the Rivers State government would present itself by entangling with the Press in promoting selectivity and nepotism among its fold when he warned that the leadership of the Rivers State Correspondents’ Chapel must eschew divisiveness in its fold as the government is interested in wide spread dissemination of its activities and not in division among pressmen. Good riddance however goes to the Bureau Chief, Ezuma who rather than cause a stir excused himself from the media chat while the rest bit their tongue in check and returned to their seats.
The action of Mr. Simeon Nwakaudu may not be unconnected with the dispensing of honourarium of the sum of Fifty-Four Thousand naira (N54,000) to each journalist that graced the Media Chat as a way of gaining accruement for himself and some of the members of the Rivers State Correspondents’ Chapel most of who he has on his special pay roll for doing nothing special.