Joint Action Front (JAF)
10, Afolabi Lesi Street, Anthony-Ilupeju, Lagos
08035068524, 08033347962, E-mail: [email protected], www.jointactionfront.blogspot.com
Wednesday, August 28th 2013
Joint Action Front (JAF)
10, Afolabi Lesi Street, Anthony-Ilupeju, Lagos
08035068524, 08033347962, E-mail: [email protected], www.jointactionfront.blogspot.com
Wednesday, August 28th 2013
Daily Trust & Channels Should Refrain From Being Used By The FG For Dis-information
Please Stop The Fabrication, Report Event As It Is!
1. The attention of the Joint Action Front (JAF) has been drawn to dis-information and fabricated reports authored by the Calabar reporters of Daily Trust and Channels Television (Mr. Eyo Charles and Ms. Imani Odey) and the need to put the record straight.
2. The malicious report from Daily Trust is reproduced below in full:
“ASUU officials in street brawl with Socialist party
Published on Wednesday, 28 August 2013 05:00
Written by Eyo Charles, Calabar
Daily Trust
Leaders of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in Cross River state who were on public protest on the streets of Calabar yesterday engaged officials of the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) in a street brawl.
The SPN were also on similar mission of protest but both parties threw caution to the wind and engaged in a free-for-all fight right opposite Governor Liyel Imoke’s office in Calabar.
Daily Trust learnt that trouble started when each of the parties wanted to be the leader of the protest into the governor’s office.
When SPN leaders saw that ASUU officials, Non Academic Staff of Universities, National Union of Teachers, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities in collaboration with Joint Action Front (JAF) were having the upper hand, they ordered their boys to shove the ASUU officials aside and take over the protest.
This led to both groups dragging themselves about, punching and tearing each other banners and hurling inventives at each other.
It took the intervention of mobile policemen on patrol in the neighbourhood and those at the governor’s office to restore order.
An Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) who led the police team warned them against further disruption of public.
Speaking on behalf of the SPN leader Segun Sango, an official that refused to disclose his name, said they were not out to disrupt the mass protest by ASUU and JAF to save public education but to join forces with them as they too have been at the vanguard in condemning what he called ‘federal government’ recalcitrance.’Chairperson of JAF, Dr Dipo Fashina could not immediately comment on the street brawl by his men and those of SPN but an official of ASUU said SPN came from nowhere to hijack a well-intended protest which they had invested much resources to express their disgust over federal government’s disregard for public education”.
THE PROTEST AS IT WENT
3. There was no ASUU Banner or leaflets at the Protest March. The JAF’s Banner was the main Protest March banner and was complimented by the banners of Nigerian Students’ Rights Movement (NSRM) and Education Rights Campaign (ERC). The over 20,000 leaflets circulated throughout the Protest March was mainly authored by the JAF.
4. JAF leadership represented by one of its principal officer – Comrade Abiodun Aremu, Secretary of JAF was clearly in the leadership of the Protest from the beginning when he declared it opened at the Freedom (Botanical Garden) Park at about 9.35am to his closing remarks at a at about 3pm. Comrade Aremu addressed the rallies at all the major points and his statements were communicated in Efik language to the people.
5. Mr. Oku Ita spoke in Efik at the Calabar Watt market and at Etim Edem Central Park, with traders and transporters coming around for leaflets and declaring their support for the protest action.
6. Comrade Inibehe Effiong, National President of the Nigerian Students Rights Movement, a final student of law in the University of Uyo spoke for the Nigerian students, while the Secretary of the Hausa-Fulani Community in Calabar spoke at Bobobiri area where there is a large concentration of Hausa-Fulani people and equally interpreted the message by the JAF Secretary and the NSRM president in Hausa language.
7. The procession went from the Botanical Garden (Freedom) Park through the Watt Market Roundabout to Etim Edem Motor park to Old State Secretariat, through Governor’s Office, to IBB Way, Cross River Broadcasting Corporation and back to Mary Slessor road to the starting point at Freedom Park.
PLEASE STOP THE FABRICATION, REPORT EVENT AS IT IS!
8. The dis-information by Channels was to profile ASUU as the organisers of the Protest. And the report of the event of yesterday was not the first time Channels TV would deliberately misinformed the general public about the Joint Action Front.
9. A similar report was done by Channels TV on the Lagos, August 13th kickoff of the JAF Protest Action to SAVE PUBLIC EDUCATION’. In that instance, Channels credited the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) as the organisers of the protest.
10. It certainly should have been in the pursuits of the dis-information agenda that the Daily Trust and Channels TV correspondents, chose to interview a select of ASUU branch leaders in attendance in order to give the protest a colouration of an affair of ASUU, thereby playing to the script of the Federal Government, that is allegedly profiling ASUU as opposition, rather than address the germane issue of Government’s irresponsibility to implement collective agreements.
WHAT IS JAF?
11. JAF is a pro-labour civil society coalition with irreproachable precedents of struggle on the side of the working people and the poor against exploitative and oppressive policies in its drive towards SYSTEM CHANGE for the socio-economic transformation of Nigeria.
12. No media in Nigeria should therefore pretend it does not know JAF. And for purposes of information, JAF is an affiliates’ organisation of socialist and non-socialist groups. It is therefore inconceivable that JAF leadership would involve itself in a brawl with any socialist platform.
13. Given our high regards for the media, whose objective reporting of JAF’s activities in the past and present are well documented, we will not take the dis-information by the two reporters on Daily Trust and Channels TV. However, we urge the managements of Daily Trust and Channels TV to address the issues we have raised with utmost diligence and save the profession of journalism from being ridiculed by those violating its basic ethics and practice.
Yours fraternally
Comrade Abiodun Aremu
JAF Secretary
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