More trouble may have come the way of political parties as a
group of professional journalists who are reputed for online publishing in
Nigeria have resolved to boycott the activities of political parties in with
immediate effect, due to diversion of campaign funds, reports
ITRealms.
The online publishers who met in Lagos State on Saturday reviewed
the activities of political parties in relation to advert patronage and rose to
a conclusion that campaign organisations of the political parties have
deliberately diverted advertising funds meant for online news platforms in the
country.
This was a situation they roundly condemned and called on
all news publishing online platforms in the country to shun all party related
activities until the abnormally is addressed.
The publishers,
ITRealms
also reports, expressed disgust at the gimmick of the campaign organisations to
use the advertisement streaming platforms of Google and other third party
advertisement streaming organisations, which pay little or nothing for it,
instead of dealing directly with the Nigerian publishers who are creating jobs
for millions of Nigerians in the online industry.
The publishers, therefore, ordered the immediate stoppage of
online political advertisements with foreign inputs with immediate effect.
The publishers gathered that one of the two major political
parties in the country had budgeted not less than N150 million for online
advertisement campaign.
However, till date, no credible online news website has
indicated it had benefitted from the N150 million advertisement campaign fund.
The Deputy Director General of one of the campaign
organisations told an online publisher at the Presidential Villa in Abuja that
approval had been given and money released for the party's advertisement
campaign on credible news websites but expressed surprise that the money had
been diverted.
This is apart from the millions of naira budgeted for media
relations.
Aside from streaming political advertisements through third
parties on the news websites, thus creating the impression that advertisements
had been given, what some of those involved in the campaigns themselves had
done was to quickly open phoney news websites and diverted the funds for the
advertisement campaign into private pockets.
It was in the light of these revelations that the online
publishers decided to, with immediate effect, boycott the activities of the
political parties, some of which "dump" press statements on the
online news websites as early as 6am and send as many as 10 of such releases in
a day.
+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) +Reuben Abati +Doyin Okupe
ITREALMS ... delivering news for ICT4D
