It is unsettling and scary that several weeks after top notch Calabar based broadcaster, Petertex Etim, was abducted by unknown persons, in Calabar, he is yet to regain his freedom, just like verifiable information about his ordeal has remained hard to get.
As a professional journalist largely functioning in Cross River State and having severally interacted with Etim, it is for now a personal loss that this abduction has broken the friendship strings of attachment in place, before this unfortunate abduction.
Again, because this abduction doesn’t appear to be monetarily driven, the hazarded guesses cannot exclude a believe that he was snatched to gag and prevent him from discharging his professional functions.
However, it is painful that several media professionals have paid very little attention to our professional colleague’s ordeal. Very little mention of Petertex Etim has been heard in the media, just like we have not gone in search of the news behind the news. This is painful, even shameful, that we seemingly have abandoned our own at a time where we should be at the fore front of a deliberate media campaign, launched on all media fronts to help free Etim.
If a politician was the one in Petertex Etim’s shoes now, we would have crafted headlines in the best written words, researched and published thought provoking features or given government and security agents leads from the private investigations we would have carried out to enrich our reporting. Shamefully, as media practitioners in CRS, we have not utilised our network of contacts, within government, to trouble government enough and galvanise her into ending this heinous saga.
We must rise up and turn our collective little into a bigger good that brings Petertex back to us all, in sound mind and body.
Iwara U. Iwara,
Publisher, www.calitown.com