A lawmaker representing Remo Federal Constituency, Hon. Oladipupo Adebutu has urged the Federal Government to grant journalists free access to information to aid good governance in the country.
Adebutu said this when members of the Ogun State Chapter of the Broadcast Journalists Association of Nigerian paid him a courtesy visit in Abeokuta, the state capital.
He said that the until the Federal Government permitted the media to perform its watchdog role in the society without any hindrance, attaining good governance would remain a mirage.
Adebutu, who is also the Chairman, House committee on Rural Development in the House of Representatives, said that the role of journalists in the country could not be over-emphasized and warned that democracy would not thrive if the Federal Government did not allow a free press to operate in the country.
He said, “Democracy will only thrive if there is a freedom of speech, communication and process of sharing knowledge and information. In the process of working towards good governance, you must have a solid and sound press, without that we cannot have the choices of information and as such we are not creating a competition.
“When there is a lack of information, then we don’t have a vision of competition and when there is no opportunity for good competition, constructive competition, then the human intellect, human capacity is limited and as such, democracy is limited.”
Speaking earlier, the President of BJAN, Mr. Kazeem Olowe, thanked the Federal lawmaker for his concern for the Nigerian media industry and journalists, promising that broadcast journalists in the state would always uphold the ethics of their profession.
