By Gift Chapi -Odekina
Order paper Initiative and other Civil society organizations in collaboration with Journalists Covering the National Assembly has called for an improved citizens participation in the forthcoming election.
The call was made during a capacity building workshop for media and civil society partners in Abuja.
According to the the Executive Director HipCity Innovation, Bassey Bassey, the need for citizens to engage with their elected representatives at different levels and hold them accountable to their duties of making quality laws and seeing to their implementation cannot be over emphasized.
He added that journalists and CSOs are saddled with the responsibility to educate the masses to hold accountable elected officers especially at the National Assembly.
Speaking also at the workshop,the Chairperson House of Representatives press corps, Grace Ike stated that limited access to refresher courses and capacity building workshops have been described as some of the challenges journalists face in Nigeria.
Ike, observed that Journalism is one of the few jobs people are employed and unfortunately left to their devices without periodic training.
She added that it is even worse for parliamentary reporters, who in most cases have to go out of their way to sponsor themselves to attend courses.
“So, I am always happy when individuals, NGOs, MDAs, corporate bodies or diplomatic institutions, etc organise capacity building workshops for Parliamentary reporters
“The Parliament seems to be the most misunderstood arm of government and its assessment has been a subject of controversy over the time.
According to her, a workshop of this nature is key in further educating and equipping journalists who cover activities of the Legislature on the best criteria or methods for properly assessing legislators.
Ike added that if the parliamentary journalists are well informed and equiped with the necessary tools, it will in turn educated citizens on performance of their legislators which will lead to informed decisions on the part of the electorate during elections.
