President Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has chased out some select media houses from covering today’s National Executive Council (NEC) of the party.
Some of the journalists affected include: Sun, Telegraph, Tribune, Blueprint, The Union, Peoples Daily, Nigerian Pilot, Daily Times, National Mirror, FRCN, Daily Independent, Liberty Radio, Vision fm, Authority Newspapers, among others barred from covering APC NEC meeting at the party national Secretariat, Abuja
The accredited journalists who have been covering the party even before the APC merger became successful, were however , denied opportunity from covering the all-important meeting.
Though the party has been without spokesperson but another aide who serves as an Assistant director of Media to the chairman were said to not want to deal with some of the media houses any longer.
When the barred journalists approached the Special Assistant to the former APC National Publicity Secretary Lai Mohammed, Mr. Lanre, he boldly revealed that the party is not going to allow unfriendly journalists access to the venue of the NEC meeting.
He also told the newsmen that the order was given from the presidency.
On his own, APC Assistant Director, Publicity, Mr. Odegbe Odewingie, told the affected journalists that some media houses have been identified as working against the party’s interest.
He said the instruction is coming from the Presidency, that only selected media would be allowed access to the meeting.
Reasons giving for gagging the media was because the party National Chairman has been complaining of getting bad press and as such would not allow media houses that are term to be on the for-front of the bad press.
It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari in his inaugural speech, acknowledged the huge support and the role play by the media that saw him and his party rode t victory, with a special mention of the social media.
