From Noah Ocheni, Nasarawa
Incessant terrorists attack and rampant cases of Violent Extremism in the society today have been attributed to poverty and high rate of unemployment in Nigeria.
The associate Editor and Head of investigative desk of The Nation Newspaper, Adekunle Yusuf made this assertion while delivering a lecture during a two day, media Master class training, (18th – 19th, Feb) Organized by ActionAid Nigeria for Journalists from Kogi and Nasarawa States, held at the Sawalino Hotel, Keffi, in Nasarawa state.
Yusuf also attributed increase in social vices to inequality, suppression, marginalization and stressed the need for Journalists to go beyond news reporting but investigate the causes of all these and the need for government to rise to its responsibilities.
In his paper tittle ” Preventing Violent Extremism and Peace Building through Budget Tracking and Monitoring, Dr. Tèrfa Abraham, a Research Fellow/ Economist, faulted budget preparation and implementation in Nigeria, as budget proposals are based on unrealistic parameters which has contributed to high poverty level in the country.
He stressed that Nigerian budget proposal is usually based on expected revenue, saying that the country over time have not been able to meet it’s expected revenue generation, hence making it difficult for full implementation of the budgets thereby causing hardship to the citizenry.
Speaking earlier, the Country Director, Ene Obi, said that the essence of the training is to build the capacity of journalists to be able to embark on, investigative writing as well as budget analysis and tracking.
The Country Director who was represented by ActionAid Director, Organizational Effectiveness, Fumilayo Oyefusi, maintained that journalists must go beyond story writing by embracing investigative journalism.
Obi stressed that journalists must be guided by the ethics and the rules guiding the profession, by being objective, factual, accurate and data based.
In his lecture, the Deputy Head, Investigations with Premium Times, Mojeed Alabi highlighted six essentials of data journalism to include, Finding data, getting the data, verifying the data, cleaning the data Analysing the data and presenting the data.
Anicentus Atakpu, project Coordinator, SARVE 2 project and Lola Ayanda, Communications Coordinator, ActionAid Nigeria, stressed the need for more collaboration between the media and ActionAid Nigeria, to ensure the success of the project.
