Dili Ezughah, executive secretary of the Nigerian Press Council (NPC), says the removal of the regulatory agency from the national budget is a huge setback.
Ezughah spoke on Thursday when the house of representatives committee on information, national orientation, ethics, and values paid a visit to the council headquarters in Abuja.
The NPC, along with all the regulatory bodies, was removed from the 2024 Appropriation Act.
Ezughah said the development had brought untold hardship to the workers of the council, with many of them withdrawing their children and wards from school due to their inability to pay school fees.
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He thanked the committee members for their efforts to salvage the situation, noting that the NPC was wrongly classified as a professional body while it is a regulatory agency.
He said there is an urgent need for a correction of this misclassification.
Ezughah said reform was taking place in the council, especially the recent creation of a marketing department to boost internal revenue generation, as well as the introduction of a fact-checking app.
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He said the app would check for misinformation and disinformation on social media.
Responding, Fatoba Olusola, chairman of the house of representatives committee, pledged the commitment of the panel to ensuring the reinstatement of the NPC in the budget.
Fatoba said the committee would do everything possible to empower the council to effectively perform its statutory functions.
He also said the enabling legislation would be revisited to see the areas that could be amended for the optimum performance of the agency.
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