The Tinubu/Southwest Media Veterans Support Group has come to the conclusion that there probably will be no let up anytime soon in the deliberate bad press from the stables of ARISE TV and THISDAY on Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the APC presidential candidate.
No one with a sense of fairness needs to be told that the deployment of Arise News Television and THISDAY newspaper by the Chairman Chief Nduka Obaigbena in their constant stalking, harassing, haranguing and attempts at blackmailing Bola Tinubu has become something of a crusade that must be pursued with all the vehemence that can be mustered by the top management of these media outfits. It has become a morbid fascination and pathological obsession.
Without rehashing the genesis of the excessive fixation of Arise TV in particular on the APC presidential candidate, which is already in the public domain, it’s a sad commentary that Nduka and his media outfits’ show of shame is a reflection of not only the rot in the media industry he now typifies, but the serious damage that has been visited on our nation’s moral compass in which Chief Obaigbena is also the perfect poster child.
For someone who has crossed the threshold of immorality into the conclave of amorality, and has since gotten away with blue murder in the reckless ways he operated, and continues to operate, in the nation’s economic landscape, it’s not unexpected of Nduka Obaigbena to feel invisible in the believe that he can continue to ride roughshod on anyone no matter how highly placed, and get away with it.
It is this false sense of invincibility that most certainly propelled him to export his brand of corrupt, seriously unethical and badly unprofessional business practices into saner climes in the UK and South Africa where he was promptly and effectively stopped in his tracks with indictments and subsequent convictions.
For someone with such a nauseating and highly reprehensible chequered history, one would have thought that Nduka’s everyday reading verse will be that time tested maxim that says “he who comes into equity must come with clean hands.”
Yet, the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of THISDAY and ARISE TV seems to be too far gone in his unscrupulous hustling, blackmailing, and unprofessional conducts that has attracted the likes of Rufai Oseni and Reuben Abati into his inglorious house of moral perverts.
Pray, on what ground or justification, for instance, does Abati, a card-carrying member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), former media aide to former president Goodluck Jonathan, and the deputy governorship candidate to late Buruji Kashamu (a drug baron who was declared wanted by the United States until his death) in the 2019 governorship election think Asiwaju must submit himself for an interview before him and their so-called Town Hall meetings?
Is it not this same station that was sanctioned by the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), a government regulatory agency, for intentionally airing what was patently fake news about Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu? And the list of their egregiousness and moral depravity goes on.
Now that Nduka Obaigbena and his house of moral degenerates has met their match, it is our hope that they will retrace their steps and walk on the path of righteousness and objectivity. While it’s within their rights to be opposed to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidential bid from the outset, what’s unacceptable, and must be rolled back, is their futile attempt at positioning themselves as champions of free press, public morality and objectivity when the facts about them and their media outfits points south.
FEMI ODERE, Spokesperson, Tinubu/Southwest Media Veterans Support Group
