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A legal luminary and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, Yusuf Olaolu Ali has tasked the political parties to embrace crowdfunding of its activities said “Government funding of political parties in Nigeria is antithetical to democratic principle“
A legal Icon said this while delivering lecture at the 2020 Press Week of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Kwara state council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), titled, Effectiveness of Party Supremacy in Strengthening Democratic Principles and Promoting National Development, in Ilorin yesterday.
The senior advocate, who said that the democratic ethos started to wane when the regime of Ibrahim Babangida funded two political parties, namely, SDP and NRC, with programmes and manifestoes written by the military authority.
He thus said that the federal government should discontinue the arrangements to encourage good governance.
“Political parties should not have owners. They should be mass organizations that give high and low, the rich and the poor the same opportunities. Ownership of political parties by individuals is directly antithetical to the democratic principle. If a political party will be all inclusive, it is important that it should be owned by a wide range of individuals drawn from all segments of the society”, he said.
Speaking as chief host of the event, Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara state who was represented by the state commissioner for Communications, Harriet Afolabi Oshatimehi, encouraged the media to continue to uphold the ethics of the profession which he said include balance, fairness, and truth.
“I urge you to remain committed to national cohesion and security. This adherence to the ethics of the noble profession is what sets you apart from ‘emergency journalists’ on the social media who have no regard for truth or balance”
In his own remarks as royal father of the event, Oloffa of Offa, Oba Muftau Gbadamosi, who is a first class traditional ruler in the state, represented by Bobaselu of Offa, Chief Mrs Wasilat McCarthy called on the stakeholders in the media industry to be treating journalists well said “workloads and hazards of the profession worth royal treat”
“Journalists are not beggars, the nature of the work requires all hands to be on deck to assist them perform their chosen vocation”
“If journalists blank out the nation in just one day, I cannot imagine how dreadful it could be. On my own, I don’t underrate journalists, I see them as partners in the art of governance and nation building”
Presence at the event were state chairmen of the two leading political parties in the country People Democratic Party, PDP, Engineer Kola Shittu and his fellow in All Progressive Party, APC, Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa where both acknowledged near absence of internal democracy at the parties system and call on the people of the noble profession to join party politics as part of ways to bring sanity to the political system.
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