Muheeb Saeed, Senior Programs Officer for Freedom of Expression at Media Foundation For West Africa (MFWA), has intimated that the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has presided over one of the worse performances in terms of press freedom in the country.
According to Muheeb Saeed, the state of the country’s press freedom is quite worrying. He stated that it is unfortunate that freedom in the media space has fallen under the President, who was a former fighter for press freedom and who as the Minister for Justice and Attorney General led the repeal of the criminal libel law.
The Senior Programs Officer stated that after so many years of tossing the passage of the right to information act, government finally passed it into law and there has generally been this reputation the President has enjoyed among Ghanaians as somebody who is quite passionate about protecting human rights generally and press freedom in particular.
However, Mr. Saeed, indicated that although press freedom is worse under President Akufo-Addo, if the nation’s rating had been sustained throughout his reign, it would have justified the narrative that “yes, we have a President who is quite committed to protecting human rights and press freedom”.
Mr. Saeed intimated that the MFWA does not see the rating as a surprise. He stated that there has been several incidents of press freedom voilation and generally, a very repressive freedom of expression environment has persisted in the country over the past three years in a way that has kept signaling that the nation’s press freedom environment is deteroriating.
Muheeb Saeed averred that all the governments, post President Rawlings, haven’t delivered on the kind of press freedom that was released. “After the culture of silence regime, we thought we were going to have something better.”
The Senior Programs Officer called for a revisit of the broadcasting bill to ensure that the nation has all the safeguards to ensure that people who are given the frequency and the license to operate actually do media work. He also admonished authorities to strengthen the National Media Authority to be to able carry its duties more effectively.
Nation has not performed
Also contributing to the discussion, Mr. Mohammed Tufiq Adamu, a Lecturer at the Communications Department, UPSA, stated that the nation with regards to media has not performed looking at the media progress historically. “Where did we come from and and look at where we are today?”
According to Mr. Adamu, the Ghanaian media from the colonial days was something that was being used by the colonial power for their “propaganda agenda”. He stated that after independence when Dr. Kwame Nkrumah took over the mantle of power, it was expected that the media would have been more free but unfortunately it wasn’t so. “With Dr. Kwame Nkrumah when the country became a one party state, the media was syphoned.”
Mohammed Adamu averred that within this period of governance, under the previous and current administrations, the nation has witnessed the rights to express freely deteriorate. Mr. Adamu intimated that most Ghanaians had faith in the government to advance in the protection of journalists but have however been disappointed.
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