By Adams Abonu

With widespread economic apprehension pervading her polity, the need to prudently manage Nigeria’s common patrimony becomes the more pertinent. A bogus public sector and its attendant consequences demands that resources allocation should be done in a manner that returns value to the national economy.

This is why the current disposition of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) to device strategies that nip profligacy in the bud and institutionalize a culture of prudence comes to proper perspective.

Since coming on board, President Bola Tinubu has not only shown a somewhat commitment towards enhancing national revival through novel policy redirection, the administration also appears poised to leave indelible footprints in the bid to place Nigeria ahead within the comity of nations.

What remains to be seen is how these reforms would transform to common good for a beleaguered citizenry. 

Among numerous interventions by the Tinubu administration recently in the national scheme of things, the initiative to put tertiary instruction as a solution provider for myriad national challenges indicates that there is a renewed hope in the development trajectory of Africa’s largest economy. At a time when tertiary education is the preoccupation of most development pundits in Nigeria and elsewhere around the world, it is expected that the impact indicator of TETFUND), the government agency with the core responsibility of harnessing infrastructural advancement in public (and private) higher institutions of learning, be accorded adequate attention.

This reporter took it upon himself to level-up with development effort at the Fund through the course of recent months, prompting this article, which aims at highlighting the  intervention strategies and the innovations brought on board by the incumbent dispensation at TETFUND and the need for President Tinubu to sustain this verve in the interest of national development.

Since he assumed the responsibility of steering affairs of TETFUND as Executive Secretary, Arc. Sonny Echono has brought commensurate confidence and a sound sense of accountability in funds disbursement. With his robust background in public procurement, the erstwhile civil servant who rose to the pinnacle of service has revived the confidence of Nigerians in the funding agency with his innovations and up-to-date strategies.

The new helmsman brought to the job a robust wealth of experience in infrastructural development, public procurement management and a drive towards information technology and innovation, having identified these as crucial ingredients in meeting the challenges of global competitiveness.

For want of emphasis on the immediate preoccupation of the incumbent management of TETFUND, certain instances could suffice. Take a recent partnership with the Research For Innovation (R4i), an innovation incubation hub, that saw the training and harnessing of innovative potentials from Polytechnics across the federation in a bootcamp for an instance.

The training was directed at developing home-grown solutions to different technological challenges cutting across health, education, utility and other strategic sectors. Participants at the innovation camp which included lecturers, could not hide their excitement in being part of a process that could engender productivity.

Then consider the sound idea of National Research Fund initiated by the Fund to harness research and innovation prospects from scholars. This idea has seen the disbursement of over 23 billion naira to sponsor more than 900 development researches across various tertiary institutions of learning and further enhancing Nigeria’s development aspirations.

These research proposals were vetted by TETFUND’s National Research Funds Screening and Monitoring Committee which recommended the funding of researches with good potentials. The refocus on research and innovation by the incumbent leadership of TETFUND is not only timely but also a reorientation that should stand the tests of modern times.

Some of the approved research works under the Science, Engineering, Technology and Innovation thematic group include Application of Hydro-Biochemical Framework to Develop a National Rural Water Quality Assurance Plan for Sustainable Water Quality Management in Nigeria, Development of Intelligent Multichamber Evaporative Cooling Preservative System for Post-Harvest Storage of Selected Fruits in Nigeria, Development of Electric Vehicles with Tracking System Features, among other resounding research ideas.

Approval was also given for the Utilization of Scrap Tyres and Plastic Wastes as Aggregate Conductive materials for Renewable Energy Storage System, Digital Financing Inclusions under Cross-Cutting thematic group. A cursory observation with the approved research endeavours would indicate a common objective of meeting development challenges.

The Fund has revealed that this innovations that meet everyday challenges will be exhibited at Eagle Square in November. This affords the nation a chance to measure investments in the educational sector through the Education Tax Fund as this would bring researchers, inventors and creators to share their cutting-edge projects and productive ideas and innovations.

Another recent giant stride in TETFUND’s bid to improve tertiary instruction in Nigeria is the equal drive being accorded physical infrastructure. It is now a common sight in public institutions to see that a proportionate portion of new building carry the Fund’s support logo. When ES Echono revealed sometime ago when he played host to the leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) that hostels are to be built across campuses for students’ to address accommodation shortfalls, it was a testament to consolidate on the gains already achieved in this direction. With the Executive Secretary inculcating the students, who are the major beneficiaries of these projects in monitoring their implementations, TETFUND has demonstrated exemplary pragmatism.

“This year, we shall provide hostels for students in 36 tertiary institutions. We realise that the places where our students live are so deplorable. We also realise that only about 15 percent of our students are staying on campus while the rest stay outside the campuses, climbing Okada many times during the rains.

“These hostels will not be matchboxes and shanties but will be solid buildings that can attract students from anywhere in the world,’’ Echono stated while also hinting that work was in progress to provide free internet for students in public and private tertiary institutions to enhance qualitative learning.

When governors from different states and across different political parties take their turns and come in their numbers to a particular agency of government, it could mean they found a treasure of value in such place. These courtesy visits by various state’s governors to the leadership of TETFUND to seek further supports for States-owned tertiary institutions also reveals the widespread acceptability of the development initiatives being implemented.

As at the last count, no fewer than 20 state governors have taken their turns to come to TETFUND with each showering encomiums on the development strides of the funding agency and the sagacity of the Executive Secretary. In one of such visits, Bauchi state’s Bala Mohammed didn’t just ask for the Fund’s intervention in tertiary institutions owned by the state but also hailed the managerial acumen of Architect Echono, whom the governor described as a bright spot of the Tinubu administration.

On entrenching accountability and prudence in resources management, TETFUND under Echono has continued to set benchmarks of integrity. The innovating in project supervising and management need sustaining and deserves accolades.

In a remark in Lagos recently during a retreat for the newly constituted Bello Masari-led Board of Trustees of the Fund, Echono had charged heads of beneficiary institutions to ensure prompt and quality implementation of projects to enhance qualitative educational environment.

While stressing that the demands are crucial for enhancing institutions that can complete on a global scale, the ES also indicated that efficient supervision remained the fulcrum of this expectations.

Strategies like signing Memoranda of Understanding (MoU), the Blackboard Scheme, Supervisory Frameworks speaks to the preparedness of the Fund to engender prudent management of scarce resources. This should rightly occupy the interest of any well-meaning pundit.

Numerous recognition of TETFUND’s impact continued to accumulate from civil societies, students, teachers’ and recently the reputable African Leadership Magazine which honoured Echono at the House of Lords in London for his “dynamic innovations.”

With President Tinubu’s directives that 30 percent of TETFUND’S budgeting be dedicated to the Students Loans Program, the times couldn’t be more auspicious to institutionalize prudence. It’s a good thing that Architect Echono and his team is championing this noble course.

Thus far, it has been an era of innovation and distinctions and a paradigm of prudence at TETFUND under the pragmatic leadership of Architect Echono, who students described to this reporter as ‘’Our Architect of Good Hope.’’ While accolades continue to pour in, much remains to be done in improving the quality of tertiary education across Nigeria.

Abonu, a Public Affairs Consultant and Development Journalist, writes from Asokoro, Abuja.

By Tonnie Iredia

There is nothing new about elections in Nigeria. Except for the annulled June 12 election, we have never had a free, fair and credible process because our politicians know that voters don’t believe in them. It is worse that it is the ruling party which uses all organs of government to ensure the right candidate does not win.

The new system in which voting is open but collation is manipulated dates back to 1999 when former American President Jimmy Carter led the international election monitoring group.

Carter told reporters that the number of voters on the voting queue was different from the results that were announced.

In other words, the mischief that needs to be cured in Nigerian elections is the collation process.

Everything is usually changed during the process to overturn the correct results with the strong telling the weak to go to court.

Our courts are not allowed to interfere in the election process hence the law that courts should never stop an electoral commission from doing its work. Many young people were probably too young to be aware of this while those who are old enough to know about the law think that the law can be experimented upon. All that one needs to do is to have enough funds to hire big lawyers that can intimidate a judge.

But whether we hire a long list of lawyers or not, the basic truth is that no court is allowed to stop an electoral body from doing its work. Although one legislator said the other day that it was for this reason that they put in the law to make it impossible for courts to stop electoral commission, it is good for Nigerians to know that even the military had the same law.

In 1993, Senator Arthur Nzeribe’s Association for Better Nigeria ABN attempted to stop the June 12 presidential election, but the electoral body ignored the court and went ahead with the election. The decision of the then electoral body was informed by Section 19 (1) of the Presidential Election Decree No. 13 of 1993 which barred any court from interfering in its work. 

So, there is nothing new with what the courts are doing today; they are following the old order whereby Judges are materially influenced to give wrong judgments. How can a court bar police and other security agencies from securing an electoral process and argue that it didn’t bar the electoral commission from doing its work? If courts are to positively contribute to national development, they must tackle the unending failed elections in the country.

Our judges are very different these days; gone were the days of Justice George Oguntade, then a judge of the court of appeal who dealt with the subject substantively. According to Oguntade, “where a court makes an order in contravention of a statutory provision which forbids it from making such orders, the order so made is null and void and no appeal need be filed against the order.”

What this confirms is that we have always had stomach infrastructure judges and lawyers including senior advocates who are always pretending that there is nothing a court cannot do. We say here today that a judge who attempts to stop an election is an unpatriotic citizen who is not bothered about our toga of a country whose elections always fail integrity tests. Oguntade’s ruling remains the latest and only law on the subject.

Of course, we are not saying that courts are irrelevant in our electoral process.  There is time for courts to work, so they need not work before their time. For example, all the wrongs which the federal high court found with the rivers state electoral commission could be used to nullify the election; they cannot be used to stop the election from holding because that would be against the law.

If courts start to break the law, then we are heading towards destruction. Even if the military keeps to its promise of allowing democracy to grow, we should not tempt them to change their mind. Besides, let us not remind politicians that they can revert to the old order where strong candidates were murdered just before voting day because people have lost faith in the judicial process. Our nation needs to listen now.

As far as ‘go to court’ is concerned, it is getting obvious that those who mouth it know the exact courts where the case would eventually be heard. To start with, it is usually the federal high court which on its own has a limited jurisdiction. The court has become so popular that it can alter state matters into federal matters.

In Kano for example, although chieftaincy matters are purely state matters, the federal high court in the city successfully created another emir. Could this idea of further compounding every controversy be the nation’s expectation of the judiciary? Chief Justice Kekere-Ekun must in her moments of deep thoughts begin to see how some judges can be stopped from getting involved in ousted matters.

She also needs to take a closer look at the way unlimited state high courts are made to lose their jurisdiction to the federal high court which ordinarily only has limited jurisdiction.  We are not unaware that despite several warnings, court are still intransigent on those rules which were made to keep them in line. Perhaps it is time to resurrect the old law which stopped the judiciary from determining winners of elections.

Instead, they should examine an election and see whether the process was followed or not. If it was followed, no problem but if it was not followed the court should nullify the election and give room for a repeat election. That may help to retrieve the integrity of the judiciary which is right now spoiling her image through the determination of elections in which there are more votes than voters.

Another thing that the heads of court can do is to stop forum shopping. Whereas it is true that all federal high courts have the same jurisdiction, it is suspicious that people leave the federal high court in the state where they live and where the case arose to the federal high court in Abuja to file their cases. What is special about the federal high court in Abuja that it is so well patronized? Could it be that judges of the federal high court in that city are secret members of a political party?

If the situation is not reversed, the judiciary would someday be like police that always cancels check points only for another Inspector General to assume office only to cancel it again because it was never obeyed. What this means is that whatever takes away food from the corrupt hands of officials will really never stop. Instead, they will design new strategies for continuing with the mischief. 

Except we take such stringent action, we might soon get to a situation in which a common thief can be freed if in his defence, he cites the police. It would then be argued that since the case has police involvement, it has to be moved to the federal high court because states cannot deal with the police. In other words, we have successfully turned the object of a case to its subject.

In Kano, it was only a chieftaincy case but as soon as police and other security agencies were added to it for implementation of judgment it became a federal high court case. Obviously, those who are benefiting from the roles the federal high courts are being made to play now are enjoying it but it is only fair that we are all reminded that someday those in government now may not be there again.

When the APC was the opposition party, it went to court, to stop the involvement of the army in Nigeria’s election. The party won the case and it was decided that the army should be far away from election centres. Today, the APC is in government and probably now sees the “usefulness” of the army in elections. If it saw this earlier it may not have gone to court to secure a victory against what it’s now doing.

Nigeria’s elections would be better handled if every organ is allowed to play its assigned role. There is no need to display voting and declaration of result segments while collation of votes is done in secret. Our Federal High Court should please give us some breathing space.

Text of a public lecture to mark the 64th Independence Anniversary of Nigeria, delivered at Iwe Iroyin House, Oke Ilewo, Abeokuta, on Thursday October 3rd, 2024.

By Dare Babarinsa Chairman, Gaskia Media Ltd

I want to thank the members and leadership of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ, the Bravo Zone, organisers of this event, for the special honour and privilege of standing before this distinguished audience at this sacred spot of Nigerian journalism.

As you all know, it was here in 1859, that the first newspaper in Nigeria, Iwe Iroyin, was published. Since then, from generation to generation, there is no stopping us the inheritors. We salute the courage of the Reverend Henry Townsend of the Church Missionary Society, for his pioneering effort in starting the Iwe Iroyin Fun Awon Yoruba ati Egba. By tackling the problems of contemporary journalism here, we are actually seeking inspirations from our professional ancestors to get us solutions to lingering problems. We are here to discuss journalism at this challenging times. Coming here to Abeokuta for me is not just a visit to the sacred grove of journalism where Henry Townsend and his colleagues found inspiration to start the journey of Nigerian journalism. For me, Abeokuta represents a special terminus in my career as a journalist. After I graduated from the University of Lagos in 1981, I was posted here for my compulsory National Service. I did my national service with the Ogun State branch of the National Youth Service Corps as the NYSC Public Relations Officer. Our office was then on Nawar ur Deen Street in the heart of the old Abeokuta. As the NYSC PRO, I collaborated with the Information Officer to produce the NYSC regular newsletter. We also produced the magazine called Corps Torch. It was an exhilarating period when one of the titans of our profession, Chief Olabisi Onabanjo, was the elected governor of Ogun State. It is also on record that the second elected Governor of Ogun State, Chief Olusegun Osoba, is also one the living legends of journalism. Chief Osoba had the distinction of serving as chief executive of three national newspapers; the Nigerian Herald in Ilorin, the Sketch in Ibadan and the monumental Daily Times in Lagos. Chief Osoba remains a great inspiration to many of us especially those who have the courage to plunge into politics. In 2006, I sought to become the Governor of Ekiti State. It was Chief Osoba who took me to the legendary Alhaji Babatunde Jose so that I can receive the right spiritual impartation from the highest ecclesiastical personage of our profession. I remain eternally grateful to both Chief Osoba and Baba Jose.At the heart of what we are discussing today is what has happened to journalism that we now have very few of our colleagues gunning for high elective offices. During the last general elections, only few of our colleagues sought high elective offices to become President, governors, state or federal legislators. In Ogun State here, our distinguished colleague, Modele Sarafa Yusuf, made an attempt to become the governor, but her ambition was aborted. We now found that the Fourth Nigerian Republic has very few journalists in high elective political offices. You ask yourself where are the Bisi Onabanjos, Lateef Jakandes and Segun Osobas of this era? Last year, one of our distinguished colleagues and one of the best-known Nigerians all over the world, Basorun Dele Momodu, sought to secure the presidential nomination of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Momodu lost his nomination bid. He did not have access to enough fund which is now the main weapon of political contest in contemporary Nigeria. Yet this is the same country in which many top journalists have played prominent roles in the past. Indeed, the founding fathers of our republic have used journalism as their staging post. Herbert Macaulay, the Father of Nigerian Nationalism, though trained as a surveyor, was also a man who used the newspaper as his weapon against the British colonial power. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the West African Pilot, was the first President of Nigeria and first Premier of the defunct Eastern Region. The first Premier of the defunct Western Region, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was also a former reporter for the Daily Times and the founder of the Nigerian Tribune, now the oldest surviving privately owned newspaper group. The first and only Prime Minister of Nigeria, the late Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was a broadcaster. We also had many top journalists who served during the First and Second Republics in important positions. Chief Anthony Enahoro, former editor of the Southern Nigerian Defender, was the hero who moved the motion for Self-Government for Nigeria in 1953. Enahoro later played a prominent role during the Nigerian Civil War and was the leader of the opposition National Democratic Coalition, which led the struggle against military dictatorship culminating in victory and the birth of democratic dispensation in 1999.The truth is that journalists have been involved in every important stage of Nigerian history. In the last struggle against military rule, many media houses were at the forefront of the struggle. Mention must be made of media houses like the TELL, The News, Punch, Guardian, African Concord, Newswatch and the National Concord. Many top journalists were sent to prison and many were hounded into involuntary exile. Some of our colleagues, like Baguada Kaltho of the TheNews paid the supreme sacrifice. Many journalists including the likes of Niran Malaolu, George Mba, Ben Charles Obi, Femi Ojudu, Onome Osifo-Whiskey, Nosa Igiebor, Soji Omotunde, Osa Director, Chris Anyanwu, Kolawole Ilori, Ayo Akinkuotu, Kunle Ajibade, Bayo Onanuga, Dele Omotunde, and many others suffered imprisonment, detention without trial, exile, persecution and brutalisation. In the end, our beloved country is now free from military rule and any form of tyranny. As we celebrate the 64th year of our independence, we should not forget also those heroes who made freedom from military rule possible. Without that freedom, we will not be gathered here today. If we dare, we can sure that operatives of the State Security would be waiting in the wings to take some people into detention.Now, our country is free from military rule; and we have elected leaders in charge of every layer of our country’s administration from the presidency to the local government councils. But our country is not free from socio-economic challenges and nowhere is more emblematic of this than the Nigerian newsrooms. In this discourse, I am going to refer to the traditional media; the newspapers, radio and television stations. The economic and social situation has affected the Nigerian media drastically. In 1966 Chief Osoba was a young reporter with the old Daily Times. He was assigned to go and cover the burial of Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa in Bauchi. Because of the urgency of the situation, he had to hire a small aircraft from Lagos that flew him to Bauchi. I don’t know which newspaper, radio or television station can afford that now. When I joined the Concord group of newspapers in 1982, our daily print run was more than 200,000 copies. During the editorship of Mr Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, the print run of the old Sunday Times was 600,000 copies. When we printed the first edition of Tell magazine in 1991, our first print run was 25,000. In my 15 years as an Executive Director of TELL, there were weeks when our print run exceeded 150,000 copies. Now the great times are past and we are worried.There is no need dwelling too long in the land of nostalgia. It is true that the traditional media have taken a beating from the new media during this Internet Age. This is the trend all over the world. But what has been a challenge in Europe, America and Asia is a disaster for us in Africa, particularly in Nigeria. I don’t know of any newspaper in Nigeria today that has a print run of more than 50,000 copies daily. Yet in this 2024, the print run of the Sunday Times of South Africa is now 500,000 copies. The Times of India is still circulating more than 2.8 million copies daily. The Yomiuri Shimbun in Japan have a daily circulation of more than 9.1 million copies. So, what is happening to us?There are many reasons for the downturn in the media. We lament about the trauma of the military years which has left us with many scars: the assassination of Dele Giwa, the first Editor-in-Chief of the old Newswatch, the attempted assassination of Mr Michael Ibru, the publisher of The Guardian, the imprisonment, the frame ups, the persecutions, the involuntary exiles, the hunting, the seizure of newspaper and magazine copies, the arsons against newspaper houses, the kidnapping and the harassments. Yes, these are serious things. But Israel and the Palestinians have been at war, alternated with armed peace, since 1948 and yet their media have grown since then. The Jerusalem Times has a circulation of more than 500,000 copies. Israel, if you must know, with a population of about 10 million people, is far smaller than Lagos State.We can also talk about the coming of the Internet Age. But it is clear that we are not more internet savvy than the Japanese or the South Koreans and Egyptians. Then what has happened to us? Why has our readers left us or why have we drifted away from our readers? The answers to these two questions are important and we want to hear from our media managers so that we can save the press and also rescue journalists and journalism from economic stranglehold. I may not know the answers to these two questions. But I can suggest some steps forward in the interest of the media and our country.The most important ingredient in any human endeavour is knowledge. This is more so in journalism. When Alhaji Jose decided that the Daily Times must be transformed into a modern media house, he invested in the recruitment of young educated persons. That was how people like Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, Araoye Oyebola, Segun Osoba, Tony Momoh, Femi Sonaike, Idowu Sobowale, Tunji Oseni and many others were recruited into the Daily Times. They were different from those who were trained in Fleet Street Journalism School, London. Now we need to invest in the training of journalists for the new age; those who can understand the transformation that is affecting the media landscape all over the world. It is when the media practitioner is educated that he can educate his audience. He must stay a step ahead of his readers and his listeners. He must know something about everything. The second step is that almost all surviving media houses need new investments. We can see that every year car manufacturers change their models. They add new things so that they can stay competitive in the market. We have seen that most media owners don’t want to put new investments in their establishment. They hardly buy new machines or invests in new skills. This is not right. Just as those who are producing carbonated drinks or beverages are always putting more money in research and new methods of production, the media should not lag behind in new investment. We have seen, with adequate investment, the television sector has been transformed with the emergence of new privately owned stations like AIT, Silverbird, TVC, Arise and Channels. These are significant results of adequate investments. However, we have not had such transformative investments in the newspaper and magazine sector.In the past, what transformed the Nigerian press into the giant of Africa was the involvement of the government. During the First Republic and up to the end of the Second Republic in 1983, the practice in Nigeria was that every senior public servant was entitled to at least one newspaper per day. In the old Western Region, every primary school was supplied with copies of Aworerin children magazine. Every secondary school had a library supplied with newspapers and magazines. In my school, Ife Anglican Grammar School, Ile-Ife of the 1970s, we were supplied with copies of newspapers like the Daily Times, Tribune, Sketch, New Nigerian, Observer, Chronicle, Herald and the Nigerian Standard. We had magazines like Time, Newsweek, African Film, Drum, Trust, Spear, Readers Digest, Headlines and Home Study. It was my exposure to these newspapers and magazines that inspired me to become a journalist.However, with the seizure of power by the military on December 31, 1983, the situation changed gradually for the worse. The new military regime cut down on the privilege of public officers to newspapers and magazines. This led to drastic reduction in the print run of media houses. By the coming of democracy in 1999, the practice of public officers having access to copies of newspapers and magazines have been stopped in most establishments. This stoppage was also copied by the private sector. Therefore, bank managers, factory foremen and sundry elites also stopped buying newspapers. Today, ignorance has become a fashionable pandemic in our country.Yet the country has no future if there is no serious investment in knowledge. Therefore, the Federal and state governments should go back to the old practice of creating access for government officials to get copies of newspapers and magazines. This will immediately boost the sales of copies of newspapers and magazines and it would help to inform the public about the activities of the government. This will indeed strengthen our democracy. But the republic would be in danger if the people are ignorant. An ignorant public can easily fall under the spell of falsehood and rumour and what has become commonly known as fake news. We cannot allow our country to be covered with the blanket of ignorance for that would endanger our democracy. The bulk of the assignment to rescue journalism from the thraldom of the challenging economic climate is with stakeholders in our profession. These are our colleagues in the Nigerian Union of Journalists, NUJ, the Guild of Editors, the Newspaper Proprietors Associations of Nigeria, NPAN, and the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria, BON. It is these organisations that can engage with the Federal and state governments to ensure that the old regime of supply of newspapers and magazines are restored to government establishments. It is also they who can reopen the old, almost forgotten cases of paper production in Nigeria. Today, an almost completed paper production industry is lying idle in the jungle of Iwopin, Ogun State and also Oku Iboku in Akwa-Ibom state. Millions of dollars have been sunk into these two industries and yet everyone is pretending that they don’t exist. It is time the NUJ and the NPAN raise the issue with the government. The cost of newspapers is prohibitive because every input into newspaper production is imported from other countries. The most important of these is the newsprint. Yet newsprints can be produced in Iwopin and Oku-Iboku. There was also the old paper mill at Jebba, Kwara State. There is no doubt that our country is passing through economic turbulence which is affecting the media seriously. Turbulence is part of existence. It is what propel societies to move forward and proffer solutions to problems. When the forefathers of Nigerian journalism gathered here in the 19th Century, it was to provide light, to dispel the darkness of ignorance. It is good we are drawing inspiration from this very spot where the light was ignited. From the light ignited here, every part of our country received light. Therefore, let us resolve to start applying solutions to make the journalists more secure and more prosperous in his job. One of the things the NUJ could do is that any media house that is employing at least 20 journalists must provide life insurance for them. This is the practice world-wide. Nigeria should not be an exception.There would be many things that would be affecting the fortunes of journalists in the new Internet Age. One is the growth of Citizen Journalism. There is hardly anything we can do about that. What we must focus on therefore is how to improve the quality and credibility of the traditional media so that Africa would not become the dumping ground of fake news and poisonous propaganda. You can imagine what has happened to the minds of some of our children that they would sell the houses of their parents and do unimaginable things so that they can finance their trips across the Sahara Desert to go to an uncertain future in Europe. In the past, Africans were taken by force to Europe to work as slaves in factories and farms. Today, the slaves pay their own fares.We who have not crossed the Mediterranean should be wary about some of our colleagues who have become enslaved by moral bankruptcy. They would not write a story or report an event unless they are bribed. They think journalism is an avenue for cheap money. Such moral bankruptcy is aided by the financial inability of many media houses to meet their obligations to their employees. This is a debilitating and corrosive situation that is digging at the foundation of journalism and undermining its professional integrity. I appeal to our leaders in the NUJ to confront this problem and reclaim the loss grounds of our professional reputation as the Fourth Estate of the Realm.We have a duty to create a future for journalism that would be better and greater than the past. At the height of his glory and power, Alhaji Babatunde Jose, the chairman and managing director of the Daily Times was said to have been offered the post of Prime-Minister in the military government of General Yakubu Gowon. That was in those days when diarchy, that is a combination of civilian and military regime, was being suggested for Nigeria. Jose was reported to have rejected the offer with the flat statement that “I would rather be the Managing Director of the Daily Times than be the Prime Minister of Nigeria.”Those were the days of yore. Now let us move forward to create a future greater and better than that past.