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General News of Wednesday, 15 April 2020

Source: www.mynigeria.com

Brittle Paper fires deputy editor for calling out rape culture

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Otosirieze Obi-Young Otosirieze Obi-Young

An online literary magazine, Brittle Paper has sacked its deputy editor, Otosirieze Obi-Young for calling out rape culture.

The ex-editor made the disclosure on his personal blog after the incident.

According to the ace-writer, trouble brewed when he published a brief report of the Kaduna's state First Lady’s supportive comments on a gang-rape threat issued by her son, Bello El-Rufai.



Recall that Bello El-Rufai, 32, had triggered social media outrage after a private message he sent threatening gang rape of the mother of a man with whom he had public disagreements over politics was made public.

“Tell your mother I’m passing her to my friends tonight,” Mr El-Rufai said to his detractor who was tweeting as @thanos_zer, before adding an ethnic diatribe: “No Igbo sounds please!”

The ensued uproar saw many Twitter users informing his mother, who was in total support of the matter.

Publishing this report in the area of Brittle Paper’s focus, which includes writers’ lifestyles caused a stir between Otosirieze and Brittle Paper's founder, Ainehi Edoro.

First, she pressured him to edit it. Afterwards, she asked that the post be deleted for good. A disagreement ensued, leading to his sack. The next turn of events was quite fast for Otosirieze to wrap his head around. Long story short, the post was taken down without his blessings and a statement was written to apologise to Hadiza El-Rufai, a political figure who also doubles as a novelist.

"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. 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.

"Six hours after the report was un-published and questions grew on social media, a statement was shared on Brittle Paper’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. I was neither consulted before nor was I informed after it went public. Because I have done most of the day-to-day running of the platform, people presumed that I took the post down and put up the statement," the ex-deputy editor said on his blog.



After all was said and done, he notified the founder of his decision to distance himself from the statement. The next morning, he woke up to be stripped of his access to his work mail and social media accounts with any prior notice.

Unwilling to be deterred, Oto is holding his head high in all of this and promised to withdraw all his creative work from the online literary journal.



"I am proud of the work we have done, undermined as we were by a lack of funding despite my best efforts. I am indescribably proud that I have done what I set out to do: open more opportunities, make what has for long seemed impossible for the young African writer suddenly possible.

"I am leaving Brittle Paper because this censorship goes against everything that the platform has demonstrated in the past and that I believe it should continue to stand for: a space of freedom, one that should be able to handle internal criticism," the winner of the Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature said.

Several reactions flooded social media afterwards: