The Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) has waded into the on-going mass retrenchment of workers at the country’s leading tabloid, The Sun.

Chairman of the Lagos Chapel of the NUJ, Mr. Deji Elumoye, told News Express that the union was saddened by the news of the retrenchment exercise and had requested a meeting with the Management of The Sun with over the issue.

“We received the bad news today and swung into action with a letter sent to The Sun Management requesting a meeting over the issue,” Elumoye told News Express late last night.

He said that in the absence of Sun MD/Editor-in-Chief, Tony Onyima, who is presently out of the country, NUJ officials were looking forward to meeting the Deputy MD/Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Femi Adesina, who is also President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE).

“We’ll be meeting tomorrow afternoon. Let’s see how the meeting goes,” Elumoye said when asked what NUJ is doing to defend the interest of its members at The Sun.

As exclusively reported yesterday by News Express, not less than 130 staff of the ten-year-old Sun, mostly journalists, had been sacked as at Tuesday, with many more scheduled to go. All the title editors have also been replaced effective July 1, 2013.

In addition, four principal officers – Editorial Board Chairman, Dr. Amanze Obi; Executive Director, Technical, Alan Jones; Executive Director, Marketing, Paul Onyia; and Principal Human Resource Manager, Patrick Enilama – have been eased out as reported by News Express on April 27. They were given three months’ notice which ended on July 1.

Sun Publisher, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, a businessman and immediate past governor of Abia State, South-East Nigeria, believes the paper to be over-staffed and has directed that about 30 per cent of the staff be weeded out.

•Photo shows Lagos NUJ Chairman, Deji Elumoye.

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