{"id":8815,"date":"2013-08-22T13:44:42","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T13:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disnaija.com\/nigeria-news\/fg-has-no-plans-to-gag-the-press-labaran-maku\/"},"modified":"2013-08-22T13:44:42","modified_gmt":"2013-08-22T13:44:42","slug":"fg-has-no-plans-to-gag-the-press-labaran-maku","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/disnaija.com\/fg-has-no-plans-to-gag-the-press-labaran-maku\/","title":{"rendered":"FG has no plans to gag the press \u2013 Labaran Maku"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Mr Labaran Maku, Minister of Information and Culture, has given the assurance that the Federal Government has no plan to gag the press.<\/p>\n

The minister gave the assurance on Thursday in Asaba at the opening of the 9th<\/sup> All Nigeria Editors Conference.<\/p>\n

Maku said that the media were operating in an atmosphere of freedom and vigorous debate.<\/p>\n

He said the media had remained the freest in Africa and added that even in the military era; it operated with a considerable degree of freedom.<\/p>\n

\u201cNigeria has remained the leader in terms of press freedom in Africa and gagging of the press in this country is not practicable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He expressed worries over some unethical practices among some journalists as well as poor quality of reports and urged the Guild to do all it could to reverse the trend.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must worry about the quality of our reports and we need strong ethics for the profession to survive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Maku said also that government was favourably disposed to discuss issues pertaining to\u00a0press council with the Nigeria Guild of Editors and other stakeholders.<\/p>\n

The minister said security remained a very serious challenge to the country and called on the media to join hands with government in fighting the menace.<\/p>\n

He said the government was poised to end terrorism and so, had deployed all strategies to fight it.<\/p>\n

Maku commended the editors for organising the conference and added that it was appropriate and timely.<\/p>\n

He added that the transformation agenda of the present administration was based on government\u2019s realisation that oil resources would be exhausted.<\/p>\n

The minister said the government had embarked on measures at revitalising other sectors of the economy to end the country\u2019s dependency on oil.<\/p>\n

Maku further urged the media to focus more on the country\u2019s economy than politics and said that government would continue to identify with the activities of the Guild.<\/p>\n

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