A human rights lawyer, Femi Falana, has challenged the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN), the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the Guild of Editors to convene an urgent meeting with a view to coming up with new codes of conduct to guide practitioners of the profession.
Falana stated this at a lecture organised to mark the 87th birthday of Professor Wole Soyinka in Lagos.
“NPAN, NUJ and the Guild of Editors must urgently step into the situation to ensure that the media self-regulate because today, one or two persons can just sit at home and set up an online medium and begin to dish out all manner of information, some of which are basically meant to blackmail. That must be corrected and we must not wait for government to do that,” he said.
On twitter ban, Falana stated that no law in Nigeria allows government to punish anyone who defies an illegal suspension.
He said, “We have gone to court and the court has given an injunction that until the determination of the case, government must not punish any Nigerian.”
An associate professor of English and Literature at the American University of Nigeria, Yola, Adamawa State, Dr, Ahmadu Shehu warned the media against ethnic profiling of criminals and urged Nigerians to come together against bad governance.
