Thomas: A Judas NUJ chairman?

 

BY DAN ETOKIDEM

It takes one lie to start a war but many truths to end it.
There is a Yoruba saying that a dog that would be lost would never hear the hunters whistle. But the hunter must blow his whistle all the same in the forlorn hope that his woebegone kennel might by some chance pick a strain of it.

About a month ago, like in recent weeks, Akwa Ibom state was in the news again. This time, the dust generated from it significantly affected my immediate constituency, the NUJ following the arrest and remanding in prison custody of Mr Thomas Thomas of Global Concord and the unprofessional and unethical role played by Mr Patrick Albert, the state chairman of the NUJ who has been serially implicated as having a hand in the whole episode.

While beauty may lodge in the eye of the beholder, truth does not necessarily reside in popular held opinion. I am compelled to react to this avoidable ugly development mainly because of the implication the issue at hand has on the future of the journalism profession in the state and why Mr Patrick Albert should take the part of honour by tendering an unreserved apology to members as well as tender his resignation as Chairman NUJ.

I, like many other journalists, never heard of the arrest of Thomas Thomas till we read the two page advertorial by the state NUJ chairman as published in some national dailies last Wednesday which was later followed with numerous phone calls from Akwa Ibom people both within and in the diaspora, the content and language of which was not only disheartening but showed a clear case of professional waywardness on the part of the NUJ state chairman. This is in itself reprehensible, but that is for a chairman that has a modicum idea of what is decent and what is not. Before the coming on board of the present state exco of NUJ, we were ably led by Mr Joe Effiong of the Sun newspapers. No need for judge or jury to decide if he was a principled envoy or not unlike the morally and ethically compromised Patrick Albert.

As I have never being tired of insisting even before the Thomas crisis tearing the NUJ apart started weeks ago, Patrick Albert is not the problem of NUJ. We must move beyond individual manifestation of societal contradictions if we are to arrive at the real source of the problem. We lost our voice, identity, independence and sence of oneness the very moment we allowed moneybags from government dictate who becomes NUJ chairman and exco at the last election. It was surrender to institutional decay. A cynical rejection of progress for the collective but triumph for individual greed. Less than a year we made that avoidable mistake, we are now paying for the chairman’s rascality,a move that has finally destroyed the artificial unity that existed in NUJ. Now the hate in the air that divides us is savage. As Joe Effiong rightly pointed out,” the leadership of the union should have asserted its independence and advised the state to do what is right when it concerns the right of journalists to do their job. If the state government has anything against Thomas Thomas, as a person, or Global Concord as an organisation, one should expect that it should have gone to court to seek redress. In the alternative, it should have petitioned the state NUJ, which has a responsibility to ensure that erring members are brought to order.

“By not acting to protect Thomas, the union leadership has abandoned a member at a very critical time and this is very unfortunate and strange. There is no doubt that journalists working for Global Concord are members of the Union, whether their medium registers with it or not. Everyone is aware that they participated fully in the last election of the union.”

“ it could not have been a mere coincidence for Mr. Thomas to be arrested on the same day the union published advertorials criticizing the Global Concord in national dailies... there is no way the Patrick Albert led exco  will come out of the crisis without denting its integrity and losing public confidence.
The chairman’s defence in the whole saga has been irrational, irresponsible and indefensible. He argued with some measure of callous ingenuity that

“For the records, Global Concord is not documented with the state council either directly or through any of our chapels, “Global Concord editorial staff are also not registered with any of our chapels, which could have made them members of the union in the state council of NUJ”.
Labouring in vain to defend the indefensible, he continued, that,

“Obviously, NUJ can only perform professional oversight functions on editorial staff and news media registered with the union,” he added. Even Aristotle would chuckle. Indeed the NUJ chairman is in dire need of elementary lessons in logic. Is this how barbariously NUJ has sunk? Is there a more shocking absurdity? What could be more ridiculous? Against this backdrop, Patrick Albert demonstrated that he remains a conflicted man lacking a unified theme. It is now pretty obvious to even someone with half an eye, that the NUJ boss,put his virtues more in service of himself and his pocket than in that of protecting members of NUJ as a family and this is dangerous as we approach 2015.

The truth is that the NUJ boss has neither acted with the dispassion and maturity neither expected of a union leader nor acquitted himself as one imbued with the kind of judgement one would be glad to offer an eye.

Principle matters; and consistency with principles is what is meant by integrity. Haven drunk from the poisoned chalice, he tried to be clever by half by claiming that “the arrest of the Global Concord editor has nothing to do with the publication by the union” and that although the two events happened almost at the same time, they had no correlation whatsoever.

Mr. Albert might also have been suffering from paralysis of the mind when he insisted that “the thrust of the controversial advert was not registration of media houses with the NUJ, but the need for documentation and strict adherence to ethical standards”.

Such undisciplined reasoning was not totally unexpected considering what transpired between the state NUJ chairman and officials of the state government before, during and after the arrest of Thomas Thomas. In lying, Mr Albert told memorable lies and in his praise of the government he was more grandiloquent but he may have forgotten that he may well be consumed by the dynamics he has helped unleash.

If he seeks greatness,he must stop using his colleagues as a whipping post. This practice does not speak of greatness. It speaks of opportunism joined by an ample sprinkling of political cowardice,portraying him for who he truly is-a providential opportunists. If this is not irresponsible leadership, then the concept has lost its meaning. His purpose is to save the world: his method is to blow it up; reminding one of Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s views of Russia’s Vladimir Lenin revolution.

Now that the reptilian Patrick Albert has shown us his true colour, the time has come for journalists in the state to urgently ask ourselves: Where did the rain start beating us? So, let us brace ourselves for the worst under the Patrick Albert led leadership or be prepared valiantly to reclaim the sanctity and independence of the NUJ or what is left of it.

Since the NUJ boss has proved to be a sword than a shield to members, the proper thing should be his resignation because the integrity and public confidence of the union under him is lost. Charity begins at home. Likewise, dishonour too takes its root at home.  Credibility too is like virginity. Once it is lost,it can never be recovered. Therefore, for the sake of everything that is decent and honourable, Patrick Albert should resign. If he won’t, I urge all journalists in the state to rise up and do the needful. NUJ is bigger than any one individual and will always outlive any administration thus we owe ourselves the sacred duty not to destroy the very essence of our being the fourth estate of the realm.