This is my rejoinder to Mr Dayo Adeniyi's news report on the Nation Campus Life. He has displayed what I may call intellectual amnesia, given the judicial constraints that characterize the NASELS elections.
Re: Controversy Trails English Election
Sir/Ma
With all due respect to your knowledge base, your experience in journalism and the initiative behind Campus Life; a column that reveals the happenings in our tertiary institutions, I must state my displeasure. I must without constraints state a fault in the operations of your column. It is being used largely by some individuals to perpetuate evil, to insight and to insult the sensibilities of law, ethics and others, on all its journalistic insincerity.
This assertion is due to the News Article written by one Mr Dayo Adeniyi, titled Controversy Trails English Election which was published on Thursday, 4th of February, 2010. The article can be best described as ventilation of mischief coupled with cognizance of inveigling implicatures.
It is true that Mr Buraimoh Folajimi ; the young man who lost to Mr Olalekan Kayode expressed his displeasure at the tables of the Judicial Committee of The National Association Of Englsih and Literary Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University (NASELS) claiming that blackmail was used against him by Adeleke Adeyemi; the associations incumbent who supported the other candidate, It also true that Mr. Buraimoh begged the committee to declare him the President-elect of the association. The ruse in the article however is that Mr. Olalekan Kayode has probably not declared that he authorized the incumbent to probably use the tool of blackmail against his obviously defeated opponent. Also, giving the circumstances that the matter is still pending under the Folarin-Dipo Kazeem constitutionally structured Judicial Committee; a body set up to investigate, question and ascertain the possibilities of Mr Folajimi’s claim, It is not yet a matter of certainty on whether the incumbent president engaged in tete-a-tetes with NASELSITES, where he played the role of a blackmailing publicist. Therefore Mr. Adeniyi should have at least given the judicial committee a chance before allowing his linguistic ego to precede underlining judicial ethics. This move further undermines his personality not only as the already established supporter of Mr. Folajimi’s candidature, but as a young man who wants nothing close to the peaceful co-existence of students of the Department of English. A man who has established a disreputable public image for the association based on farce. This is also a wild attempt to be judgmental when the decisions of the constitutionally enabled committee have not even begun.
Having served as a campus journalist for five years and as a immediate past Editor of a campus based media group; The Megaphone News Agency, Obafemi Awolowo Univeresity, I posit that such misinformation was caused by inadequate editorial pursuits of Miss Florence Nwozo, who I am made to believe did not confirm such sensitive news from reliable sources like The Association of Campus Journalists , Obafemi Awolowo Unversity (ACJ), seasoned campus Journalists like Ayodele Obajeun, Akingbola Yemisi, Oni Afolabi, Oluwalano Bankole,Hannah Ojo, Eyinade Tobi, to mention but a few.
It is also important to postulate that the editor of Campus Life in person of Miss Nwozo would have taken the news as an information that is not conclusive, as a report that in all journalistic confines should not be published based on the fact that The case is still pending in what can be best described as an election tribunal, a court; as the committee functions in that capacity.
I hereby call on the Editor of the column; Campus Life to pay serious attention to the objectivity of the works being sent to her by all asserting aristocrats; writers and not journalists; politically cunning ‘pen prostitutes’ so that readers will not be made to read fictional works in place of news.
I also call on the general Editorial board of the Nation Newspapers to continue to engage in political discourses as they have always done. The great minds in Obafemi Awolowo University are proud of your journalistic pursuits. Nevertheless, such unnecessarily incitement and ventilations of selfishly orchestrated factions such as this should be curtailed on Campus Life.
I also would want to use this medium to call on the Head of Department of the concerned department to use his office to call students to caution. He can also use his office to resolve this leadership quagmire in the departmental association before there is a further tarnishing of the department’s name. The Department is known to have produced leaders in media, education, business, and so on, not media arsonists. This unfortunate precision should be quickly nipped in the bud before it becomes a battle of words, letters and perhaps later punches, lynches and slaps.
The International Conference of Students of English and Literary Studies (ICOSELS), which is to be held in OAU is around the corner and it is a pity that the national president of the Association; Mr. Dayo Adeniyi is not willing to publicize the conference through the column, instead he is quick to unsheathe his swords when all aggrieved students are keeping their positions under covers so as to achieve a successful conference.
I Thank you for the space.
Femi Morgan, 400 level student of the Dept. of English, Obafemi Awolowo, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, A JOURNALIST, AND COPY EDITOR.
