Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia
It was an outpouring of goodwill messages, Thursday evening, as Ikengaonline, the media arm of Africa Centre for Transparency was formally unveiled.
Eminent personalities from all walks of life, including Nigerians in the diaspora, joined in the virtual launch as a legal luminary, Chief Mike Ahamba, formally presented the online media platform.
Professor Okey Ndibe in a keynote speech, noted that the South-East had remained under reported since the return of democracy in 1999.
This, according to him, was because most media organisations are concentrated in the South-West and the northern part of the country.
Ndibe regretted that the absence of media presence in the South-East partly accounted for the sorry state of affairs in the zone.
He said South-East had “become the arena of some of the fiercest challenges that we have in our current democratic struggle.”
Ndibe urged Ikengaonline to help in exposing the ills in the region and to also help in projecting the ingenuity of the people.
In a remark, Dr. Kole Shettima of the MacArthur Foundation thanked the publishers of Ikengaonline and pledged the support of the Foundation to the success of the project.
“We will not hesitate to do anything we can to ensure you succeed. We shall always be there for you because your success is our success.”
He noted that the foundation has been supportive to some independent media organisations in the country, but would want to also extend its support to up-coming second generational media platforms like Ikengaonline,” which will eventually become the flagship of media house in Nigeria.” He described Ikengaonline as an idea whose time has come and noted that with the caliber of people behind the news platform and indeed the quality of the people online for the virtual launch, he had no doubt that the publication would do well.
Speaking also, Mrs. Motunrayo Alaka, the Executive Director of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), expressed her delight over the entry of Ikengaonline into the media space.
She said that the Centre would collaborate with Ikengaonline on the areas of using the media to hold government accountable to the people.
Mrs. Alaka said the Centre would continue to support media organisations to drive media independence and hold government accountable at the sub-national level.
She noted that Ikengaonline is covering an area that is under-covered in the media.
The WSCIJ chief executive charged Ikengaonline to focus on the apprenticeship scheme and education of the girl child in the South-East.
She urged the online platform to beam its searchlight on infrastructural decay in the South-East, poor electricity, and the right of the girl child.
For Dr. Joe Abah, Nigeria Country Director of DAI, all the issues in the country, whether poverty, insecurity, tribalism, drug abuse, prostitution, separatist agitations, corruption, ritual killings and other vices have their roots in the weakness of government at all levels, which has allowed discontent to fester.
He noted that people of the South-East are entrepreneurial in nature and their only desire is to have a government or a governance system that allows them to do their business in peace.
According to him, the “South-East is a mixed bag of fortunes” with Abia and Imo states not living up to expectation given that they are oil-producing states. He noted that the idea to birth Ikengaonline was a great one and lauded those behind it.
“The power dynamics in our society is still such that adversarial campaigns can still be ignored. There are governments who are willing to partner with people who are interested in good governance to showcase what they are doing, and willing to invite public criticism or public debate. But when someone or people are unwilling to fulfill their responsibility as a government, Ikengaonline, should, by all means, call them out and partner with those willing,” Dr. Abah noted.
He stated his willingness to assist the new media platform. He also praised the MacArthur Foundation saying he was not surprised that the organization was behind the Ikengaonline project given its track record of consistency in promoting accountability and transparency in the country over the years.
In her goodwill message, former United Nations Special Rapporteur, Professor Joy Ezeilo, said that birth of the media platform considering the array of ace journalists behind the wheel, would set the agenda for development and transformation in the South-East. She said that the arrival of Ikengaonline would raise the accountability stake and put leaders on their toes to be more responsible.
The former Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, decried leadership failure in Nigeria especially in providing security for the citizenry, and charged Ikengaonline to help in exposing the real situation in the country particularly in the South-East.
Professor Ezeilo charged Ikengaonline to focus on the place of women in Igboland with a view to addressing the wrong notion in some quarters that women should not be accorded equal rights with their male folks. She advised the new media platform to encourage citizen reporting so that the voice of the ordinary people could be heard.
In a goodwill message, Professor Abigail Ogwezzy-Ndisika, the first female professor of mass communication at the University of Lagos, and consultant to the MacArthur Foundation, thanked the vision bearers of the media platform, saying that it will put those in positions of authority on their toes.
She said that the coming of Ikengaonline would be the game changer in the South-East as it will help put those in authority on their toes and make the people demand for accountability from their leaders.
Registering her concern over the sorry state of infrastructure in Nigeria, Professor Ogwezzy-Ndisika noted that the rising agitations in parts of the country would naturally fizzle out if government addressed infrastructural decay in the country.
Dapo Olorunyomi, Publisher of Premium Times, congratulated the people behind Ikengaonline, especially Dr. Osmund Agbo and Dr. Chido Onumah.
He warned the management of the platform to resist the temptation of turning it into a commentary platform, even as he recognised the importance of commentaries in the media landscape. Instead, he suggested that “reporting should be so central to the whole mission of Ikengaonline because if you are really going to use it as a platform to help put the agenda of development and democracy on the table, it must then be positioned as an instrument of accountability, gatekeeping and agenda setting through rigorous reporting.”
Professor Peter E. Odo congratulated those behind Ikengaonline for the successful launch. He noted that the vacuum Ikengaonline stands to fill in the South-East in particular and Nigeria in general is enormous and the news platform couldn’t have come at a better time.
Similarly, a participant, Solomon Ani, congratulated the publishers of Ikengaonline, noting that the platform would help bridge the communication gap between South-East and the rest of the country. “We must intentionally pursue a home-initiated and home-sustained industrialization through sincere hard-work and cooperation,” he added.
In her remarks, Olubunmi Dan-Ekhator, a Rome-based Nigerian journalist praised the originators of Ikengaonline. She said was certain of the success of the platform because of those behind it.
Elias Ngwu in his contribution said: “While aligning with the views expressed by speaker after speaker on leadership/governance deficit in Nigeria, scant attention has been paid to issues of followership. Any cursory observer would agree that failure of leadership in Nigeria has existed in tandem with a consist success of followership. This is an area that has clearly been under analyzed in extant conversations.”
Numerous other speakers applauded the initiators of Ikengaonline and assured them of their continued support and partnership.
