BY: Saviour Adugba
The International Press Centre (IPC), and the Media Rights Agency (MRA) have partnered with the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) to hold a two-day workshop in Lagos where Nigerian journalists were trained on how to employ investigative journalism in their day-to-day reportage.
Trainers at the IPC workshop
The Workshop also focused on how the journalists can properly utilise the FOI act to source for information from public agencies.
The workshop, which was held at Pearlworth Hotels, Lagos had 25 journalists pooled from the Southwestern Nigeria and Edo State in attendance.
In his opening remarks, Lanre Arogundade, the executive director of the IPC welcomed the participants to the workshop, and noted that the event was organised to help equip journalists with the skills needed to report on democratic accountability and to hold politicians to their promises.
He said, “This is pursuant to the aims and objectives of Component 4b: Support to Media of EU-SDGN project being implemented by our organisation to empower the Nigerian media to be professional, ethical, issue-focused, gender and conflict sensitive in the reporting of the democratic governance and electoral processes. The project also seeks to equip journalists with appropriate skills to engage in the reporting of democratic accountability in order to check impunity in the electoral process and ensure that elected politicians are made to account for their campaign promises.
“It is in the above context that the programme for this workshop has been designed to examine some dimensions to the issue at stake including the role of the media in ensuring good governance, the understanding of the frameworks and issues in campaign finance and the best practices in investigating political and campaign finance issues.”
The two-day event saw presentations on topical issues like the role of the media in ensuring good governance and government accountability, understanding and reporting campaign finance and political expenditure frameworks and issues, using investigative reporting techniques to monitor compliance with campaign finance and political expenditure regulations, understanding the key features of the Freedom of Information Act, and deploying the FOI act and other investigative tools/methodologies in reporting COID-19 funds in the public interest.
There was also a plenary session to accommodate story pitching from journalists who were expected to use the knowledge gained from the workshop to suggest high interest investigative stories that they were willing to pursue.
Resource persons at the event included Lanre Arogundade; the Executive Director of the IPC, Jide Ojo; the Executive Director of OJA Development Consult, Tobore Ovuorie; a multi-award winning investigative journalist, Edetaen Ojo; the Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda (MRA) and Dayo Aiyetan; Executive Director, International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR).
At the end of the summit, participants were encouraged to utilise the knowledge gained at the workshop to identify stories that were of high public interest and continue to hold government and politicians accountable.