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From Taiwo Oluwadare, Ibadan
The Guild of Online Media Practitioners of Oyo State (GOMPOS), the online chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), has declared the Alhaji Alhassan Yayha-led national leadership of the union illegal, following a fresh wave of controversy over the exclusion of the online chapel from the forthcoming Oyo State Council elections.
In a strongly worded statement signed on Saturday by its chairman and secretary, Comrade Femi Atoyebi and Comrade Dapo Falade, GOMPOS faulted the decision of the NUJ National Secretariat and the outgoing Oyo NUJ chairman, Comrade Ademola Babalola, to bar its members from voting in the December 9, 2025 council election.
The NUJ national leadership had on Friday released a list of 14 recognised chapels eligible to participate in the poll—omitting GOMPOS and several others. The exclusion, GOMPOS argued, not only contradicts established NUJ procedures but also invalidates the November 2024 Triennial Delegates Conference in Owerri, where GOMPOS participated and voted in the election that produced the current national executives.
“It is funny that GOMPOS, a chapel duly inaugurated by the Comrade Ademola Babalola-led Oyo State Council on 27 November 2022, is now said not to qualify to vote,” the statement read. “Disqualifying the online chapel automatically means the elections of Alhaji Alhassan and other national officers are illegal since GOMPOS participated in the conference that brought them into office.”
The online chapel accused the national leadership of double standards, describing its claim of ignorance over the inauguration of GOMPOS as “absurd” and a reflection of declining leadership integrity in the union.
According to the statement, if the national body insists that GOMPOS is illegal, then all activities in which the chapel participated including the election of the current national executives must also be considered null and void.
“This casts shadows on the character and quality of leadership we have at the national level,” GOMPOS said. “It will be absurd to allow the illegality perpetrated by the now disenfranchised online chapel to go unchecked. Since we have been declared illegal, we also declare the Alhassan-led national leadership illegal.”
The group stressed that its position was not motivated by personal grievances but by a desire to uphold justice and fairness across the union. It demanded a refund of its 2025 annual dues and payments for membership identity cards, insisting it would not beg to participate in the Oyo Council election.
The statement also highlighted growing leadership and administrative crises in many NUJ state councils, which GOMPOS attributed to the national leadership’s alleged failure to maintain equity and due process.
During GOMPOS’ inauguration in 2022, outgoing chairman Babalola had praised the calibre of its members and affirmed their rights to vote, be voted for, and participate fully in trainings and other union activities—positions the online chapel says make its sudden disqualification contradictory and unjustifiable.
GOMPOS reaffirmed its commitment to journalistic integrity while urging the union to rectify what it described as an “injustice to one, which is an injustice to all.”
