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It has been said that the basis of life is to create and leave behind a better world than the one we were birthed into. The quest to pursue and live up to that worthwhile objective foist and drove men to come together and establish society and a set of institutions that were built on certain ethics, values and norms.
But because there is nothing in this world that is static in the true sense of it, as humanity evolves, the need to reorganise and structurize society into a macramé of complementing divisions with each performing its independent task in such a way that makes society work better and function efficiently, became unmistakably compelling. It is this necessity that led to the establishment of not just government, but one with three independent arms with each checking the excesses of the others and ensuring that the privileges and powers that are exclusive to public leaders are not abused or used to create irreparable harm to society and the governed.
Even with the rational introduction and integration of the executive, legislative and judiciary arms of government into traditional governance structure to crosscheck abuses, men soon realised that there seems to be an increasing observation of the very opposite of such call in some quarters of the world with a disturbing accumulation of evidence that suggest that rather than for each of these arms to hold one another accountable they seems to encourage such abuse of power either by selective silence or direct endorsement of same through the use of state machinery to promote such harm against the led.
For this reason, the selfless and patriotic responsibility to now hold government officials across the three arms accountable naturally came knocking on the doorstep of press men and women who lead their lives reporting both the actions and inactions of those in power including their excuses. As the press went ahead to take on the job of reporting the deeds of both elected and appointed public office holders; what history has unambiguously reminded us is that evil men in power generally hate seeing the press doing such, even though there has been both a sustained and meteoric rise of evidence that clearly shows that when the press is allowed to execute its task without brutality from miscreants and hoodlums in government houses, society flourishes, democracy grows and transparency help ensures accountability and bring state-officials’ led offences to the barest minimum.
In Nigeria of today, Cross River State government is currently leading the tyrannical pack of wolves that is publicly waging war against free press by using state apparatus to wrongfully abduct, brutalise and detain press men, and after much media outcry from several quarters throw up laughable junk court charges against outstanding pressman like brilliant Agba Jalingo in a quest to abuse court processes and extort the flaws in our judiciary system to keep an investigative pressman like courageous Jalingo away for long behind bars while the government go about grabbing people’s land, refusing to account for fallen economic trees running into millions of naira under the guise of invisible superhighway project that led to the falls of those economically significant trees from Bakassi to Obanliku, and outrightly refusing to conduct local government election for close to half a decade now with the local municipalities having no elective leadership_ a prerequisite for inter community peace maintenance and efficient security outcomes for all.
Without the need of sounding equivocal, we at Citizens Solution Network have it on authentic ground that the entire attempt to charge Agba Jalingo, a renowned journalist that has been on the frontline reporting all the excesses of the Cross River State government in a bid to bring transparency to government dealings, hold its henchman accountable and reintroduce sanity to the state with treason and terrorism; is nothing but a shameful delay tactics to use its judiciary assets to keep this impeccable journalist behind bars longer over the slowness of Nigerian judiciary system by exploring inherent lengthy period of adjournment and ridiculous bail conditions in prosecutorial case of this sort of title-charge.
As we all frown at this shameless tactics by the government, let it be said that our entire watch and solidarity is on this case and with brilliant Agba respectively. For no man can hold the press ransom without being ridiculed and foist to abandon such counterproductive position. #EndtheDelayTactic, #FreeAgbaJalingo
Signed
Richard F. Inoyo
Convener, Citizens Solution Network.
