The media has been urged to probe funding, gender and inequalities brewing corruption in the defence and security sectors.

Experts advocated a law for protection of journalists to enable them execute their roles.

These were brought to the fore at a two-week fellowship at the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies (CPSS) at Modibo Adama University in Yola.

Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), in collaboration with Transparency International (TI) , and support from The Netherlands, organised the programme for journalists.

The programme, which brought five journalists from the print, electronic and online media, exposed participants to courses, such as understanding media and journalism in Nigeria’s fragile context; understanding investigative journalism in fragile settings; understanding defence and security in Nigeria; security funding: corruption and accountability in Nigeria; Defence and security investigation and media reporting, as well as Defence budget/spending: media reporting and accountability.

Dr. Chris Kwaja urged participants to ask questions that would expose corruption in the sector, encouraging them to not be discouraged by the shrinking civic space.

He appealed to media practitioners to insulate themselves from ethno religious biases bedevilling the society, reminding journalists they had a constitutional responsibility to hold government to account.

“Those who perpetrate corruption do not do so under any religion. They are united as criminals. The same thing for the poor people who are victims of corruption. Their humanity as poor people join them. The same thing you see as poverty in the South, you see in the North. The same kind of woman who is killed in Anambra or Imo is the same kind killed in Sokoto or Kano.

“How do we build that conversation and change the narrative?

That is where the journalist comes in. You are the bridge builders between government and the people. You need to look at the role corruption is playing in fuelling and sustaining insecurity. How much as been spent by government in the farmer/herder conflict for instance?

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“Who is involved in investigative journalism in the sector? Who protects that same journalist? What do we do about reporting corruption in a fragile or complex environment? How do we deal with the centrality, potency of conspiracy theories in generating or undermining stories about corruption in the context of gender and the defence sector…?

Addressing some of the posers raised by Kwaja during their lectures, Head of Department (HOD), CPSS, Prof. Jude Momodu, and senior lecturer, Dr. Saheed Owonikoko called on CISLAC to sponsor a bill for the protection of journalists at the National Assembly that would ensure some measure of socioeconomic security for the family of the journalist in case of death or incapacity in the line of duty.

Prof. Momodu highlighted the need for journalists to always consider national security while carrying out an investigation, just as he appealed that there should be more inter-media collaborations in investigations of national interest to achieve maximum impacts.

He urged the government to focus more on providing human security instead of the current practice were all emphasised were placed on physical security while other human developmental indices that help to ensure safer communities were ignored.

On his expectation after the training, Dr. Owonikoko said he hoped more malpractices and human rights infractions alleged to be ongoing in the sector would be exposed in order to entrench the culture of transparency and accountability.

“If this happens, we will be rest assured that the sector will now be able to deliver quality services to Nigerians in terms of making sure that Nigerians are safe and also ensure that they create the stability that is required for the economy to thrive such that people will be engaged in terms of getting jobs and also in terms of Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) which as we know, has been very challenging…” he said.

CISLAC’s Executive Director, Auwal Ibrahim Musa (Rafsajani),in his remarks said the fellowship was part of Transparency International’s Defence and Security project being implemented by CISLAC.

Musa, who was represented by the programme officer, Bertha Eloho-Ogbimi, said “We have had to conduct trainings for media correspondents and editors and the fall out from that training was the fact that having to analyse, monitor defence projects have been a very big challenge.

“Even in the course of this training, we have come to realise the opague nature of the defence and security project so we thought we could do something to improve the capacity of our media partners to be able to dig deeper, investigate and come up with better reportage about defence spendings and how they manage their powers in terms of having to apply authority without abusing it because everything about this project is improving transparency and accountability in the Nigerian Defence Sector in a way that it will favour the masses.”