The Director General of the Industrial Training Fund, Dr. Juliedt Onaeko, has debunked insinuations making the round that the Funds’ headquarters has been relocated from Jos to Abuja.
The DG, in a press statement in Jos, described as untrue the content of a publication credited to Daily Trust of Monday with the caption: “Uproar in Jos as the ITF moves Headquarters to Abuja.”
Onaeko said: “The attention of the Management of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) has been drawn to an article by Messrs Onimisi Alao and Ben Atonko entitled: Uproar in Jos as the ITF moves Headquarters to Abuja, which was published in the Daily Trust of Monday, July 06, 2015.
“The ITF, as a matter of policy, refrains from reacting to every error by the media owing to its belief that given the pressures of their job, mistakes would always occur.
“On occasions, however, we are constrained to correct glaring errors or misinformation that is deliberately targeted at portraying the Fund and its functionary in bad light.
“This latest outing by the Daily Trust falls in this category. From the headline, it will be clear to every discerning reader that the article was a hatchet job which ultimate aim was to sow discord and cast the Director-General in very bad light.
“The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary defines ‘uproar’ as a ‘situation in which people shout and make a lot of noise because they are angry or upset about something, or a situation in which there is a lot of public criticism and angry argument about something that somebody has said or done’.
“Both usages do not justify the uproar suggested by the headline and neither do the body of the article, which runs more than a page qualifies for its usage.
“What is clear therefore is calculated attempt by the writers and their sponsors to manufacture uproar where there is none.
“What one finds especially strange is that an article about an institution that is concerned with human capacity development would find itself on the Property pages of the Newspaper.
“The obvious conclusion that can be drawn from this curious placement is the desperation to run the article despite the lack of appropriate space, which warranted the displacement of more relevant materials on the Property pages.
“For those close to the ITF, Daily Trust’s publication may not come as surprise as it follows an emerging pattern or campaign from some sections of the media who are fronting for some faceless people and interests that are determined to impugning and running down the ITF DG, Dr (Mrs.) Juliet Chukkas-Onaeko, MFR, despite her sterling achievements only after one year in office.