Why journalists should earn higher pay – Gov Shettima

The advocacy was part of Governor Shettima’s remark at the 2013 Press Week and Northeast zonal meeting of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, held in Maiduguri last Thursday. Present at the occasion was president of the NUJ, Alhaji Mohammed Garba.
“We have in this country a great press that is peopled by very hardworking, fearless, courageous and unrelenting professionals who work so much and earn so little as wages. In most cases, they don’t enjoy benefits that correspond with the work they do and the hazards they undergo. When there is crisis, everyone runs to hide but the journalist goes in search of what happened and what is happening, to inform those people hiding so as to make them safer in their hideouts,” the governor stressed.
He said during festivities, when others wear all manner of clothes and plan outings with their families and friends, the journalist is busy capturing how the celebrations take place, while he is excluded from the festivities. A reporter covering a Government House, he pointed out, has no weekend, no public holiday and sometimes, no time to spend with his families.
Alhaji Shettima said the media serves as the only tool used to calm the situation or mobilise certain actions. “A lot of people have their lives saved by news they either get directly from the media or through friends and relations who pass news contents to them concerning dangerous happenings around or ahead of them,” he said.
According to him people rely on the media for weather updates to plan their days, and for financial reports, job opportunities and new discoveries on health, science and technology. “Information, as I once said, is not just power as popularly chorused, information is life its self,” the governor maintained.
“The journalist works, as we say in Nigeria, 24-7 and we might add, 365. To make matters worse, most journalists are poor, except for the changing times now. Otherwise, if you attended events in the past, all it took to identify the journalist was to look out for those lanky men with shirts talked into their trousers, holding a pen, a memo pad and a heavy bag pulling down their right arms,” he reminisced.