Media, military must cooperate, says NGE president

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For Nigeria to overcome its security challenges and experience peace, the military and the media need to work together harmoniously. 

The President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Femi Adesina, said this yesterday in a paper he presented at the opening of a four-day workshop in Lagos, entitled: “Impact of Military/Media relations in Promoting National Peace and Security.”
The workshop is organised by the Nigerian Army School of Public Relations and Information (NASPRI), Lagos.
Adesina said: “Nigeria is in the trouble she has found herself today because relationship between the federating units, the different ethnic nationalities and groups, has gone awry. And this underscores the need for positive, harmonious relationship between the military and the media, because it has great implications for peace and security in the country.”
The General Officer Commanding (GOC) 81 Division, Major General Tamuno Dibi, said the workshop was to create synergy between media and the military.
Dibi added that the military, as regimented organisation, only recently decided to open its doors to the media for flow of information. He said: “In doing so, the military cannot as a matter of fact over-look its role as the custodian of the national intelligence.
That is where I appeal to our media friends to cooperate with us in building a unified nation.” But Adesina said that the relationship between the media and the military had gone through many phases, ranging from hostility to brutality, mutual suspicion, and the ‘wary collaboration’ currently existing between the two.
He said: “Under military rule, the media and the military were like cat and mouse. Even a journalist like Mineri Amakiri was not spared by the then Military Administrator of River State Commander Alfred Diette Spiff who used broken bottle to shave the head of Amakri who was not writing in favour of his government in the state then.”
The NGE president added that Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor were also jailed under Decree 4, during the Buhari/ Idiagbon regime.
He said: “Many journalists were beaten up, doubled up, harassed, and traumatised in different parts of the country. The result was mutual antagonism between the two institutions, when they should rather collaborate for peace and security.