Dr Mustapha Lambe, a former Head of the Department of Mass Communication, the University of Ilorin, has urged the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) to sanitise the media space against quackery. Lambe made the call in Ilorin while delivering a paper at the Grand Finale of the 2024 Press Week of Kwara Council of NUJ.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that in the paper is titled: “Quackery in Nigerian Media Industry: Implications on Credible Journalism Practice,” Lambe enjoined the union to deploy relevant arsenal towards combating the scourge of quackery in the profession in Nigeria.
According to him, the field of journalism is one of the most venerated professional practices and has remained endangered from inception.
Lambe observed that journalists “are committed to the tenets of their profession,” make sacrifices towards creating a worthwhile living for the nation’s citizenry, insisting, however, that the “cancerous infliction of quackery within the practice” requires deep conversation that could exterminate the menace before it grows into a metastatic malignancy.
The don, who is also an expert in Communication Studies said: “Quackery represents the infiltration of the noble practice of journalism by unqualified, unethical, unschooled individuals.
“These unqualified people misrepresent the profession and the practitioners in all ramifications of their engagements. As a profession saddled with the responsibility of educating, informing, and entertaining members of the society, it requires serious protection from charlatans’ unbridled incursion.”
The don condemned the increasing wave of misinformation, disinformation, and malfunction on social media and advocated the need to curb the ugly trend. He warned that quackery in the profession remains injurious to effective service delivery, calling on the hierarchy of NUJ to wage a holistic war against the menace, which, he stressed, is tarnishing the image of the profession.
In his remarks, the NUJ Chairman, Kwara Council, Malam Abdullateef Ahmed, said the ongoing reform in the council is not meant to witch-hunt anyone but to put the union on a sound footing.
Ahmed applauded the Kwara Governor for his support to the council and eulogised those who contributed to the success of the 2024 Press Week.
