Armsgate: More media houses recant as the Sun returns N9m

The Sun yesterday said it had returned a N9 million check in reaction to the unfolding $2.1 billion arms purchase scandal in which ex-NSA Sambo Dasuki just roped in the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN).

The money, the newspaper stated, was given to it by Dasuki “as compensation for the seizure of its newspapers and stop­page of circulation during the Good­luck Jonathan administration in June 2014.”

“As a very responsible newspaper organization, which places premium on ethics, individual and corporate integrity, we are certainly embarrassed by the turn of event,“  Managing Director/Editor-in- Chief, Mr. Eric Osagie said in a statement on Sunday.

The tabloid’s public statement followed that of the Punch last week. The newspaper stated its resolve to quit the   NPAN over the arms scandal and its fallouts. The newspaper was no part of the media houses that shared in the largesse.

“The revelations indicate that the sum of N120 million was disbursed in murky circumstances to some member-companies of NPAN, ostensibly as compensation for the losses they incurred in June 2014 when armed soldiers seized newspapers and newspaper distribution vans,” the chairman of the newspaper Wale Aboderin stated in part in the press release.

According to the NSA, the leading media that grabbed the biggest chunk of the arms procurement money was This Day. Its proprietor, Nduka Obaigbena who chairs the NPAN, said he gave  out N9 million to each of The Sun, The Vanguard, The Guardian, The New Telegraph, The Tribune, and four others.

The money, totaling N120,000 million was paid through General Hydrocarbons, a company the Punch said was unknown to the NPAN

A number of the publications, including The Tribune, The New Telegraph, The Guardian, and The People’s Daily, however, debunked the allegation—an action that prompted the NPAN to denounce some of its members.

But the Executive Secretary of NPAN, Feyi Smith, confirmed that the 12 newspapers agreed to collect the NSA’s dole out in a meeting the NPAN held at the Abuja office of the Daily Trust on March 17. And that some of the cheques were still waiting in the NPAN’s office to be collected as at December 12.

Knocking the integrity of the newspaper body, the Punch said there’s need to rebuild and refocus the NPAN as a vibrant, independent business association and pressure group funded only by its members.

“We will ONLY reconsider our withdrawal from NPAN when the critical issues which we, and other concerned stakeholders, have raised are addressed.”