The management of the Owerri Capital Development Authority, OCDA has come out to claim that it is not after the owners and operators of the Trumpeta newspapers, an Owerri based tabloid.
Trumpetaoperators had last week raised the alarm on suspected threat to their lives when OCDA officials accompanied by fierce looking men stormed their office complex on Item Street, Ikenegbu Owerri to mark the building.
According to the Newspaper Management, the OCDA operatives specifically stormed the street searching for Trumpeta office and not the building. The fear of the newspaper owners was that even before OCDA came, it had also asked another newspaper publisher in Owerri the actual place Trumpeta office was located.
Further prove that made Trumpeta indicate that there was more than the eye can see in the visit was the manner of the operation which attracted residents of the street as well as the great number of OCDA workers including armed policemen that joined them.
Furthermore, the fact that the only building housing Trumpeta office was the only one on the street marked for provision of “building plan” further raised the suspicion that prompted the newspaper to voice out about the ominous signals arising from the visit.
Trumpeta was also worried that the building housing the office has no visible structural challenges and was built more than 15 years ago without any government agency having brushers with the owner and developer to warrant the recent OCDA visit.
What further fertilised the suspicion of Trumpeta that their lives were in danger if the OCDA visit was properly reviewed was a reaction by an ad-hoc staff of government agency, who used his Facebook handle to post that OCDA second visit to Trumpeta won’t be “funny”
But at an interface in OCDA Trumpeta had with the General Manager, Engr Innocent Ikpamezie, the government agency said there is nothing like that adding that OCDA was only out do its job.
Ikpamezie said that the OCDA at times work with information from the general public and uses certain landmark addresses to locate a place stating that what transpired may be the case of Trumpeta.
Though, the boss of the OCDA complained of a sour working relationship with one of the editorial staff of Trumpeta after a very good start when he came on board as the General Manager.
Expressing further on this angle, the GM however accused a particular Trumpeta editorial staff of going to the social media and also using the medium to publish what he considered offensive report against the agency after the working partnership couldn’t continue.
He asked the medium to ignore whatever wrong insinuation created by their visit and went ahead to implore the newspaper to ask the landlord to comply with the OCDA demand.
Also speaking, a representative of the medium at the meeting disclosed that Trumpeta as a law abiding outfit with respect for constituted authorities can’t stop operatives of OCDA from discharging. The Trumpeta official noted that the special interest placed on finding OCDA raised the concern.
