By Jude Owuamanam, Managing Editor, Northern Operations
JOS (Sundiata Post) – Thirty years after he was unilaterally sacked as the editor of The Nigerian Standard newspaper, Mr. Jonathan Ishaku on Wednesday finally got reprieve as a National Industrial Court sitting In Jos declared his sack as null and void.
The court presided over by Justice Gandu also asked the Plateau state government to reinstate and pay him all his entitlements.
Ishaku was sacked by the Ibrahim Babangida regime in 1987 when he wrote an editorial critical of an action of the military regime.
General Chris Ali, who later headed the state of emergency government in Plateau State in 2004, was the then military governor of the state
Ishaku told Sundiata Post that all his plea to successive administrations, both military and civilian fell on deaf ears.
He then proceeded to the NIC. In her judgment, the presiding judge gave November 2016 as the terminal date for his disengagement from service as
Ishaku thanked God for his victory.
He said all these years instead of reinstating him, various government in Plateau State had preferred to give him one appointment or the other, adding thst it had not deterred him from fighting for his rights.
He regretted that years after military rule, arbitrariness and disobedience to the rule of law still persist in Nigeria.
