Group Carpets Liberty TV Owner Ramallan, Over Endless Falsehoods

A group under the aegis of Functional Journalism Promoters(FJP), has called on stakeholders in the industry to call out Tijjani Ramallan, owner of Liberty TV, Radio and Voice-of-Liberty newspaper for “deliberately spreading” misinformation and causing confusion.

Chairman of the Group, Abubakar Usman Kajuru, said in a media statement on Wednesday that the broadcaster has been “using the advantage of his Radio, TV and newspaper business that are currently struggling to survive” as “tools for misinformation, selective political patronage, being decidedly partisan and targeting for campaign of falsehood government officials that refused to give him contracts”.

“It is on record that Ramallan lost his desperate bid for the contract to upgrade Kaduna State Media Corporation(KSMC) and failed to clinch another one at the Nigeria Port Authority(NPA) and therefore turned Kaduna State Governor Nasir Elrufai and Hajiya Hadiza Bala Usman into his punching bags, using his underpaid, weary media staff for a dirty campaign”, the group said.

The statement also noted that having lost access to broadcast commercials and advertisement patronage for his Voice of Liberty newspapers, “the man has been using outright falsehood as a weapon of seeking attention for contracts that could help prevent his media company from finally collapsing, as it has been indebted, judging from the most recent media report about Kano office staff quitting their jobs in anger”, the group noted

The group also accused Alhaji Tijjani Ramallan of “fast turning into the number one fake news agent in Northern Nigeria, using his social media accounts to conjure up political breaking news that don’t exist”.

The statement noted that it was worrying that Ramallan “has now transformed from a supposed media owner to a specialist in the art of extortion using his media consortium as a stepping stone. We pity the remaining staff who work their hearts out for the negligent, irregular salaries, though many have continued to quit the job in their droves”.

The group noted that Alhaji Ramallan’s style of misinformation and creation of confusion was the gutter press kind of journalism, adding that “the man is giving a bad name to the profession and has, by his endless charade on social media, underscored the urgent need to descend on quack broadcasters and print media owners, who thrive on cheap blackmail and extortion”.