On Sunday, October 13, the Northern Regional branch of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) held a meeting to deliberate on the Association’s affairs in the region.
The meeting, attended by some media practitioners in the region, began at 3:10pm lasting about one and a half hours.
The GJA Regional Secretary, Albert Futukpor, read out the Association’s annual reports covering 2022, 2023 and 2024. He also read out financial statements of the Association and expenses over the period; 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Media practitioners present were given opportunity to ask questions as well as seek clarifications on the reports.
Some participants asked questions suggesting that the report was not detailed and did not give a breakdown of specific amounts spent on specific items. They also demanded receipts covering every expenditure.
The GJA Regional Chairman, Yakubu Abdul-Majeed responded to the questions.
His responses did not satisfy some of the participants, and it was then agreed that the Executive officers should engage professionals to prepare the financial statements and subsequently organise another meeting to present the reports.
Participants then sought clarifications on other issues including how journalists were selected for training opportunities, what kind of partnership the GJA had with others to train journalists, and the operations of the Anta GJA Scholarship Fund, which were responded to by the Regional Chairman. The Regional Secretary also stepped in briefly to respond to some of those clarifications. However, the Regional Secretary did not respond to any questions or clarifications on the financial statements presented.
Therefore, the report in the public domain, written and widely circulated by Abdul Hayi Moomen, Public Affairs Officer of the University for Development Studies (UDS) was false and not the true reflection of the event. Hayi Moomen suggested in his report that the Regional Secretary was defensive preventing scrutiny of the financial statements. However, we are not surprised that Hayi Moomen wrote and widely circulated such falsehood. It has always been his intention to damage the reputation of the Regional Secretary and court public disaffection for him. This is obviously to enable him (Hayi Moomen) to be seen as a good person to assume Executive position in the GJA, which he has been nurturing since he came to the region. Since the Regional Secretary did not respond to any questions on the financial statements, how could he be defensive preventing scrutiny of such reports?
Hayi Moomen, Martina Bugri of Joy News, Murtala Issah of GBC and Mahama Seth Sayibu of UDS are all not members of the GJA in good standing. However, the Regional Secretary invited them to the meeting on grounds that they were all media practitioners. If the Secretary weren’t tolerant, how could he have invited people, who are not in good standing, to such a meeting.
There was a television crew to cover the proceedings of the meeting. However, Hayi Moomen and Murtala Issah vehemently argued against media coverage of the proceedings saying it was an in-house meeting. It is now clear why they prevented the media coverage of the proceedings.
By Alhassan Sayibu