SThe Imo Sate House of Assembly and correspondents in the state may be headed on a collision course, as the Assembly has commenced a restrictive policy that effectively bars correspondents from its activities within the chambers.
About 33 correspondents comprising reporters for national newspapers, radio and television networks were barred by the new policy of the Assembly.
Following several embarrassing incidents and crude blockade of correspondents and other journalists from accessing the parliament, even with valid identity cards from their various media outfits, the correspondents under the aegis of the Correspondents’ Chapel, Imo State Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists petitioned the Speaker of the Imo State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Chiji Collins urging him to review the policy that clearly denies journalists access to information from the Assembly.
The letter which was dated November 11, 2019 and signed by the Chairman and Secretary of the Correspondents’ Chapel regretted that the Assembly did not think it fit to notify correspondents in the state before enforcing the strange policy which was premised on exercising some form of control through a mandatory accreditation for journalists.
The letter read in part: ” Mr. Speaker, since this untoward action, our members who come to the Assembly Complex with their valid identity cards have severally been embarrassed and harassed by the security personnel attached to the House of Assembly, on the instruction of the leadership of the Assembly.
We view this action as a dangerous precedent and if steps are not taken to redress it, we are afraid the legislature under you might be viewed as undermining free press and of course, the very essence of constitutional democracy which it pledged to uphold.
“Furthermore Mr. Speaker, it would seem unfortunate that at a time when the executive arm of the state government under Governor Emeka Ihedioha is signing up to the Open Government Partnership(OGP), the state legislature is making an attempt to restrict the press, limit our access to information and render the activities of the Assembly opaque.
“The core essence of OGP which this government has signed up to is in entrenching transparency and mainstreaming accountability in governance and these cannot be the sincere intentions of this government if journalists are barred from the State Assembly and denied access to information.”
The letter also noted that not even under any of the military administrators that ruled the state was the House of Assembly regimented to the extent of restricting or barring practicing journalists from its activities.
It added also: “All the more, the Imo State House of Assembly is not a security facility but an estate of the people of Imo state whose right it is to know what goes on in the Assembly Complex per time, through the instrumentality of practicing journalists. Hence, denying the correspondents access would be tantamount to denying the people access to their parliament.
“Your duties as legislators should not infringe on our duties as journalists and the watchdog of society. One cannot arbitrarily shut down the other.”
The letter was received by the administrative secretary of the Speaker on the 12th of November, 2019 and nearly one month after, the Speaker and indeed the Imo State House of Assembly, have neither replied nor reviewed the said inhibitive policy.
