PRESIDENT of the Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki, yesterday, rejected an appeal made by the national president of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ),

Alhaji Waheed Odusile to regulate the media. Saraki said he would never support any government attempt to regulate the media because he believes strongly in a self-regulated media.

In his remarks when he led the National Executive Committee (NEC) on a visit to Saraki, Odusile urged the Senate to come up with new legislation to make journalism a formal profession. He also pleaded with the Senate president to empower the NUJ to regulate journalism in Nigeria.

“We are not entirely satisfied with the way journalism is being practised in Nigeria because of some of the constraints we have, one of which is that, today, there is no law in this country that recognises journalism as a profession. Today, journalism in the country is an open-ended affair, and as such, anybody who can speak English, good or bad, can come in and go out at will.

“This state of affairs has bred quacks which has be- come a problem to us but because we lack the requisite laws, we find it difficult to regulate the profession and to be able to flush out the quacks.” He said the leadership of the NUJ was putting up a bill that would address the anomaly bedeviling the profession when passed into law.”

Reacting, Saraki said: “The things you have said this afternoon are very important which we must address if we are serious about the role that journalism and the media play

in our society because the change we want to bring to the country is not just on the economic or social aspect but even in the moral and ethical structure of our democracy. The media has a key role to play. And if the media does not have its own house in order, it is very unlikely that they can play that role.

“For the first time, I am hearing an NUJ President saying that they have problems which we have always known that you did but nobody was ready to say you had problems.”

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