International Press Centre tasks journalists’ on constitutional obligations

The International Press Centre (IPC) has challenged Nigerian journalists on need to win back public trust by holding as sacrosanct the constitutional obligation on them by the constitution.

Penpushing reports that, the Executive Director of the Centre, Lanre Arogundade stated this in his welcome address at the Media Training Workshop on ‘Using FOI for Investigative Reports of Campaign Finance and Covid-19 Accountability Issues’, held in Abuja.

The Director added that, part of measure for the media practitioners to win confidence of the public, also include;  to monitor governance and holding government accountable to the people.

‘Let me also say that this workshop is taking place at a time when there is growing public perception that the Nigerian media has been compromised and that there is a dearth of investigative journalism; so much so that those of us who argue that there are still dedicated journalists sometimes get scorned’, he said.

‘We therefore have the challenge of winning back public trust by holding as sacrosanct the constitutional obligation imposed on us by the constitution to monitor governance and holding government accountable to the people’, Arogundade stated.

‘While not being oblivious of the obstacles that daily confront us including all forms of threats by the government and the political class, for which we require our media professional associations and bodies to be proactive in confronting, we must still realise that our best defense lies in sticking to good journalism’.

Penpushing further reports that,  Arogundade disclosed that the workshop was organized by the International Press Centre (IPC), Lagos-Nigeria, Media Rights Agenda (MRA) and funded by the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN).

The Executive Director  explained that, the project  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 issues at stake including the role of the media in ensuring good governance, the understanding of the frameworks and issues in campaign finance, the understanding of the Freedom of  Information Act and best practices in investigating and reporting political/campaign finance issues’, he said.