Deputy Editor of Brittle Paper, Otosirieze Obi-Young, has left the literary magazine over a scathing article on the First Lady of Kaduna State, Hadiza El-Rufai.
Mrs El-Rufai stood in defence of her son, Bello, over the weekend for threatening a Twitter user.
Mr Obi-Young then wrote a piece condemning the first lady, although she later apologised for not reprimanding her son.
Obi-Young left his job on Wednesday for, among other reasons, refusing to change the headline of his piece ‘Novelist, Feminist & Kaduna First Lady, Hadiza El-Rufai, says all is fair in love and war after son’s gang-rape threat draws backlash’.
In the report, he also criticised ThisDay newspaper for a report headlined ‘Endearing Qualities of Kaduna First Lady, Hadiza El Rufai’ which was published hours after criticism flooded the first lady’s defence of her son.
However, in a statement, Obi-Young explained that he refused to follow his employer’s directives to pull down the article.
“The founder called me and expressed concerns about my criticism of a Nigerian newspaper in it and the informal and strongly worded tone addressing said novelist. I edited the post, removing the relevant sections,” he said.
“The founder called back a few minutes later and said she wanted to take down the report. That was unacceptable to me. I saw no reason why my post-publication edits, which removed my opinion and restricted it to reportage, were not enough.
“I saw no reason why her concern about my lack of objectivity was not something that could be fixed by her own edits or rewriting. So I cut short the conversation: I said I no longer wished to discuss this report, that she should take it down if she wanted.”
Publisher of the magazine, Ainehi Edoro, told Premium Times that Obi-Young flouted editorial guidelines of the company “and was unwilling to make changes in the report.”
She said the report seemed fine “until she got to the last paragraph which did not only sound strong but also criticised other Nigerian papers.”
“Unfortunately, this all occurred at a time I had to prepare time-sensitive lectures for my students, and without sufficient time to edit the post. The time difference between Nigeria and the U.S. also left me with little time to act quickly, so I pulled the post down as the exigent thing to do,” Ms Edoro added.
The publisher later released a statement saying the magazine has never been funded by Kaduna State Government.
