By Kenneth Chibundu
Reading carefully through a news report in ‘African Examiner’ today, what readily came to my mind was the unfortunate growing rumour mill in Enugu state which has fused in an ignoble union with an equally rising rate of emergence of fifth columnists seemingly for the sole purpose of distracting the present administration of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi.
Writing under the headline- Exclusive: Gov. Ugwuanyi set to reshuffle Cabinet, may sack SSG- the reporter, believed to have filed the said report from Enugu, seemed to have tried to pool the wool over the eye of his readers. For a story as sensitive as an alleged move by the governor to reshuffle his cabinet and sack the secretary to the state government, there was no believable attribution of claimed result of investigation.
Worse still, there was no attempt by the reporter, Ignatius Okpara, to get any official information from any government source.
His attribution was the usual lazy-way-out hackneyed inclination to so-called dependable source embarked upon by naïve and lazy reporters who have also assumed a new ignoble role of mischief-making in general news reporting.
Hence, some questions readily come to mind: if a reliable source hinted him that Ugwuanyi is on the verge of effecting a cabinet shakeup and that it would consume the government scribe, why could he not just put a call across to the state commissioner for information or any other official of the state government?
In claiming that a good number of commissioners serving under the governor were foisted on him by his predecessor and the deputy senate president, he showed no proof at all that Ugwuanyi was so obviously guided by the two politicians before he selected his cabinet members. Where is your proof?
Yet, any discerning reader of that story would also easily ask the reporter and his source what proof the have to show that the governor wants to sack some commissioners because they have not been performing their duties creditably. Has there been any real or imagined body language of the governor that has shown that he is not happy with any member of his cabinet?
The posers raised notwithstanding, it seems that the author of the story is working with or have fallen victim of the machinations of some fifth columnists in the state who appear to have been raising the level of their clandestine operations to distract the present administration in the state.
And it is also possible that the said emerging fifth columnists are doing what they are doing now to cajole the governor into taking actions they desire to pave the way into the administration for them or their agents or sponsors. So, it seems the current game is all about selfish interest.
Having marked the first anniversary of his administration, it is only patriotic to allow the governor to concentrate on governance and make the next necessary moves to shore up the gains of his momentous first year in office.
To engage in reports like this one which lent itself to antics of beer parlour and motor park gist of what supposedly takes place in the inner recesses of government is to ridicule the noble job of informing and educating the mass audience.
