De-Marketing Rivers, Counter Productive -Okah

The Rivers State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Barr. Emma Okah has described the continued presentation of Rivers State as an insecure and unsafe place by those who do not mean well for the state as an ill wind that blows nobody any good.
Barr. Okah made the observation while speaking as the Special Guest of Honour at the official presentation of a new tabloid, The Vortex Newspaper, published by a veteran journalist and a former Editor with The Tide Newspaper Dr. Alpheaus Paul-Worika.
Represented by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Pastor Paulinus Nsirim at the event which took place last Friday at the Ernest Ikoli Press Centre in Port Harcourt, Barr Okah said that the security challenges experienced in the State were such that were general to all states in the federation and asked those who were struggling to make the situation in the state look worse than it is to have a rethink.
According to the Commissioner, the danger of projecting the State as a place not suitable for residence and business activities is that everybody who lives and does business in the state loses at the end of the day due to the negative confessions and evil reports of those who think they stand to gain some advantage in the hope that they would run the present government down by such damaging publicity.
“Those who are engaged in de-marketing the state do not stand to benefit anything because whatever happens to Rivers State invariably affects them as well.
“If we all join hands together with the government to make Rivers State a secure, safe and prosperous place, everybody in the state will partake in the prosperity and the peace.
“In the same vein, if we run the state down and set it on fire by our activities, nobody will escape the adverse consequences, including those who have assigned to themselves this unwholesome and destructive undertaking”, he said.
Barr. Okah appealed to journalists in the state to do themselves and the state a world of good by objectively reporting happenings, in the state and within the general state of affairs in the country.
He congratulated the publisher of The Vortex Newspaper for his courage to embark on the venture and expressed the hope that the publisher’s experience and knowledge of the terrain would make the paper stand the test of time.
He described the publisher’s gesture of owning a newspaper house as one that would correct some of uses and abuses seen today in newspapers, adding that The Vortex Newspaper should be able to uniquely distinguish itself, from other newspapers as it would help in bringing back real professionalism in the newspaper industry in Rivers State.
The Commissioner charged journalists on changing the negative narrative by enemies of the state who are poised to undermine the noble gestures of the state government in combating crime and criminality in the state, adding that journalists should project the positive image of the state to the outside world.
According to him, “the administration of Governor Wike in the past three and half years had returned the image of the Garden City to its pride of place in terms of culture, infrastructure, education, health, human capital development and total reduction of crime in Rivers State, so ignore those who want to de-market the state for their own selfish interest and gain.”
Speaking also, the former Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, George Thompson Sekibo, stated that his expectations were that The Vortex Newspaper becomes a national newspaper that would compete favourably with other national dailies and even The Tide Newspaper.
Sekibo commended the publisher of The Vortex Newspaper, Dr Paul Alpheaus Worika for his vision and advised that the newspaper should bring development, empowerment and restoration of values to the newspaper industry in the state and country at large.
In his paper presentation on the Topic: “Newspapers and Stakeholders’ Identity Crisis In Nigeria,” the guest speaker, and a veteran journalist, Amaopusenibo Bobo Sofiri Brown explained that current stakeholders in the society had shifted completely from productivity to entitlement culture, thereby endangering the newspaper industry

Opaka Dokubo/Susan Serekara-Nwikhana