The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has charged the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), on the need to play its role in ensuring peace and security in the country.
Mohammed urged the group to speak out against those fanning the
embers of disunity and discord.
The Minister made the call in Abuja on Monday when he received the
President of NIPR, Mr. Muktar Sirajo and other members of the
Governing Council on a courtesy visit to his office, ahead of the
Institute’s Annual General Meeting in Bauchi on 20 May 2021.
“Each of us in our respective positions has a role to play to tone
down the rhetoric and reduce the tension (in the polity), and I am
glad that NIPR is lending its platform to work with the government to
ensure that we have a country, which is peaceful and which is secured.
“Without security there can be no development and that’s why this
administration is doing everything possible to return peace and
security across the country. This is where I think you can come in as
a body of NIPR that we must put the nation first,” he said.
Alhaji Mohammed welcomed the NIPR’s offer to make available its
platform for a national engagement on national unity, peace and security, saying this falls into the template of the town hall meetings on topical issues, which have been institutionalized by the Federal Government.
He also urged the NIPR to join the federal government in the fight
against fake news, saying the NIPR needs to rein in members who always
throw professional ethics to the wind for pecuniary gains in order to
advance fake narratives.
“You have a powerful platform to actually ensure that the menace of
fake news is confronted squarely. Regrettably, however, members of the
Institute have been found waiting. They most times place pecuniary
interests and motives above professional ethics and patriotism.
“If you recall the sad incident of the P&ID saga, it was a member of
this Institute, a firm of Public Relations Consultants, which was hired to give the impression to the world that Nigeria indeed entered
into an agreement with P&ID and actually reneged, and as such Nigeria
should pay over US$9 billion. It took this Ministry and others to go to the UK to actually change the narratives,” the Minister said.
In his remarks, the President of NIPR, Mr. Sirajo, decried the politicization of the security situation in the country by
politicians, saying the issue of security is beyond politics.
He said the NIPR is ready to provide a platform for national dialogue
on peace and security in order to secure a consensus on the unity of
the country.
