New phase of Crime Reporters Association of Nigeria (CRAN)

On Friday, members of the Crime Reporters Association of Nigeria (CRAN) will vote in new executive members to lead the association.

Members shouldn’t forget the essence of CRAN. It’s not about enthroning Igbo’s or Yoruba executives, it’s about bringing back the lost glory.

So, before you cast that vote, ask yourself if your vote will assist in any small measure to bring back that glory.

In fact, a leadership that has a majority of a particular ethic group should be suspect.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who wins; what matters is whether the new leadership will return the association to the path it strayed.

Some years back, when Mr. Dipo Kehinde, now publisher of Chief Detective, one of the foremost crime magazines in Nigeria, was president of CRAN, the association soared like an eagle.

Everyone wanted to belong. It wasn’t because of anything special that Kehinde did. The simple truth was this;  Kehinde was just being himself.

He practiced a leadership that saw everyone being carried along. Members of his executives each had a role to play and knew their roles. Nobody was schemed out of anything. Nobody was slighted. Nobody was insulted.

The association back then was a force to be reckoned with; how did the association strayed from the straight path that Kehinde showed its members?

The next incoming executives should forget about ethnicity and look for ways to take the association back to the path where Kehinde and his predecessors left off.

The incoming administration should remember that an association is not a one man’s show. An association shouldn’t be run by bunch of cronies with selfish and pecuniary reasons.

If someone is suspected, members should have the balls to demand for a meeting, query and probe such a person. The president of the association, members of the executives or ordinary members, should be sanctioned if found to be involved in any sort of shady or unbecoming behaviours.

The president should be impeached if he’s found wanting.  Members should stop pussy-footing in challenging the leadership.

In every system, in every nation, in every society, the leadership simply gets away with murder when people keep silence in the face of tyranny, oppression, sheer, brazen stealing.

Our humanity and integrity die every time we allow a sinner to go unpunished because we fear him. Or because we fear and worry over whatever favour he or she may bestow on others, leaving us in the cold.

Backbiting, backstabbing and hateful gossips, will not take the association to the next level.

Members that are ready to confront corruption can take the association to the next level.  Members make a colossal mistake every time they looked away, pretending not to know that their friend, who is the head of the association, is bad.

Members should attack bad eggs with the decisiveness it deserves. Why so many continue to get away with corrupt practices in the association beats ones imagination.

Does this mean that every member is lily livered? Anyone that hurts a fellow member deliberately should be sanctioned. Any member that attempts to bring shame to the association should be sanctioned. Nobody should be treated as a sacred cow.

Most importantly, it’s sheer stupidity to think that an association belongs to a particular group of cronies. It belongs to every member.

CRAN leadership should begin to look beyond admission of only electronic and print media into its fold.

Online media is the new face of journalism today. The association should open its mind and begin to embrace this tough, but bitter truth.

It may be a bitter pill today that may even cause acute indigestion for some people, but it’s a pill all Nigerians, if not the whole world, will have to come to terms with.

Furthermore, the association needs vibrant, younger members. They should be encouraged and welcomed to join the fold.

The new leadership should remember the unity of a bunch of broom. As a single stick, the broom will break, as a bunch; they are strong, hard to destroy.

There are many people, standing in the wing, waiting to feast like rabid dogs on the broken carcass of the association. They are waiting with bated breath for it to break. They’ll walk on its corpse.

It must not be allowed to be broken into factions. This was not the legacy Kehinde left.

The most beautiful thing about CRAN is its Aims and Objectives. They are lofty and ought to strike a chord within every crime reporter. Every member should take time to read them again.

Another important thing that members keep forgetting, is that, “the eye, the nose are one; hurt not the other, that the other may not bring tears.”

Members of CRAN are many hearts in one body. They shouldn’t forget that. To hurt one, is to hurt all.

Let’s love one another.