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 Yahaya–led national presidency of the Union illegal, following what it described as the unjust disenfranchisement of its members ahead of the Oyo State Council election scheduled for 9 December 2025.
In a strongly worded statement issued on Saturday by its chairman and secretary, Comrade Femi Atoyebi and Comrade Dapo Falade, the chapel condemned the NUJ National Secretariat and the outgoing Oyo Council chairman, Comrade Ademola Babalola, for excluding GOMPOS from the list of 14 chapels cleared to participate in the upcoming election.
The group said the action was “deliberate, discriminatory and a betrayal of due process,” stressing that the same GOMPOS was duly inaugurated on 27 November 2022 by the Babalola-led administration and fully recognised during the 2024 Triennial Delegates Conference in Owerri, where it voted to elect the current national leadership.
According to the online chapel, declaring it unqualified to vote in the forthcoming Oyo election implies that all activities it participated in—including the election that brought Alhassan Yahaya to office—must also be considered invalid.
“It is very funny that GOMPOS, duly inaugurated and recognised by the Oyo State Council, could now be said not to qualify to vote. If we are suddenly illegal, then the national leadership elected with our votes is equally illegal,” the statement read.
The chapel further criticised the NUJ National Secretariat for supporting what it described as “blatant illegality,” insisting that the leadership could not claim ignorance of the inauguration of GOMPOS as the 19th chapel of the Oyo Council.
GOMPOS argued that its disenfranchisement raises serious questions about the character, credibility and fairness of the Union’s leadership, citing widespread crises across several state councils allegedly caused by the national body’s failure to uphold justice and equity.
The chapel maintained that it was not lobbying to be included in the upcoming election but was instead demanding a refund of all payments made for 2025 annual dues and identity cards, since it has now been labelled illegal.
“Inasmuch as we have been declared illegal, we want the whole world to know that the current NUJ national leadership is illegal as well. A legal structure cannot be built on a defective foundation,” the statement added.
Recalling the inauguration of the online chapel, GOMPOS noted that Comrade Babalola had openly praised the calibre and credibility of its members and assured them of full rights and privileges, including the right to vote and be voted for.
The statement concluded with a call for fairness in the Union, warning that “injustice to one is injustice to all.”
