President of the National Union of Campus Journalists (NUCJ), Samuel Ajala, in this interview with Abdulrasheed Hammad, unveiled the agenda and programmes towards repositioning the union. The plans include a partnership with media organizations and professionals in the country and measures to enhance press freedom in Nigeria campuses.
Your executive has been up and running with some programmes based on your campaign promises. What have been the outcomes of the programmes so far, and what other ones are you planning to implement?
Since we came on board, what we have been trying to do is ensure that we reposition and rebrand the image of the union on how it was done in the last administration, but due to COVID-19, a lot of things could not happen.
I had to ensure that we actually revisited some organizations and some individuals in the media civic space that could actually partner and help to amplify our works and all and so far it has been a productive engagement with them and we are looking forward to working with them in the actual sense.
By June, we are going to be launching series of projects and programmes from webinars, to the female campus journalist network, the Nigerian campus electricity project, and a couple of the projects we are working on.
We gave organized an event to commemorate Press Freedom Day. We are planning a lot of events and all that is going to happen. For instance, we have embarked on our website project and almost completed it and is going to be launched officially in June or July.
Following your engagements and visits to some major stakeholders in the media industry, how much support are you getting and what ways can your executive be supported to achieve its goals of raising the standard of campus journalism in the country?
Following our engagement and visit to stakeholders in the media industry, it has been a productive one. We are now in the phase of actually sharing our proposal for different projects with them because, in our organization, our work is basically on proposals and projects so that we can use it to engage with all our partners because that is what they are asking for.
When it comes to support, we need support both financially and in any other area like mentorship for campus journalists. This is an organization not being funded by anybody. Basically what we do is to use an internal revenue fund and is not effective yet.
What we are getting from our local chapters per year is not even enough to run the union itself. We are calling for more supports and partnerships who are interested in working with campus journalists should reach out to us. So we can actually meet the standard of campus journalism in Nigeria.
It is important to let you know that by the end of 2021, campus journalism is going to spread across every nooks and cranny in Nigeria. We just need more supports from organizations and individuals to achieve this aim.
You have raised concerns about the lack of press freedom on some campuses in the country, is there is any hope that school management will yield to your demands?
Press Freedom is very important in our campuses and that is why we are engaging with the necessary authority to ensure that there is no gagging of press freedom on campus and to ensure that campus journalists can practice as expected without external incursion from anybody.
What should be the basic tenets of practice of campus journalism which campus journalists should abide by to avoid unnecessary clash or interference from campus authorities?
We are trying to ensure we are an independent body and we are not being controlled by anybody and so far we are able what is required and needed as a campus journalist. Definitely, school management will have no cost other than to just yield to our demand as expected.
