The Nation Newspaper

Tag: media

  • NEITI seeks greater media partnership

    NEITI seeks greater media partnership

    The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has renewed its appeal to the media to support its commitment to end corruption, impunity and mismanagement of oil, gas and mining revenues.

    Its Executive Secretary, Mr. Waziri Adio, made the appeal when he visited The Nation.

    He  said  NEITI’s mandate  consistent with that of the media as watchdogs of the society.

    Adio underlined the role of the media in public education, enlightenment and social mobilisation, identifying dissemination of NEITI industry audit reports as an area the support of the media is indispensable

    He said: “NEITI exists to ameliorate and reduce the resource curse syndrome in Nigeria. The EITI approach to reversing the resource curse dwells on management of natural resources for the benefit of the people through the use of transparency and accountability tools. We need the media to help use the information and data disclosed by NEITI to shape public debate required to sensitise the citizens to ask informed questions on the management of natural resource revenues. We also need to empower the citizens and other accountability actors to appreciate their roles and the press to help set this agenda. The end goal is that abundant resources should transform to better living standards for the people.

    According to him,  until NEITI Reports lead to reforms in the extractive sector, sanction infractions and bring about improved quality of life for the citizens, the job of NEITI is far from done.

    Adio said: “As leaders, we should model the values we preach and walk the talk. There must be consequences for bad behavior and this can be reenforced by the Media.”

  • Media accreditation opens for ITTF Nigerian Open

    Media accreditation opens for ITTF Nigerian Open

    The media accreditation for the 2016 International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Lagos World Tour tagged Nigerian Open begins across the country.

    Intending journalists and media houses willing to cover the five-day championship are expected to send their names and medium to nigeriattf@gmail.com. The deadline for registration has been fixed for May 10.

    According to the organisers – Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF), this year’s tournament promises to be exciting as top players from Africa and Europe have confirmed their participation in the highest-paid Challenge series in the ITTF World Tour calendar.

    According to ITTF Director of Competition, Karl Jindrak, the Nigerian Open is one of the Challenge Series tournaments in the ITTF calendar, and it holds on May 18 to 22 at the Molade Okoya-Thomas Hall of the Teslim Balogun Stadium.

    Participants will jostle for $46,000 (N13.8m) this year while defending champion, Egypt’s Omar Assar will be making a return to Lagos after the disappointing defeat he suffered against Nigeria’s Aruna Quadri at the ITTF Africa Top 16 Cup in Khartoum, Sudan.

    Also, other top players from Egypt who have been part of the championship in the last three years are expected to return to Lagos in their bid to sweep the prize money.

    Six events have been listed by the world table tennis ruling body and they are singles (men and women); doubles (men and women) as well as U-21 boys and girls.

    There are indications that top players from Europe and Asia will be gracing this year’s tournament as part of their efforts to garner world ranking points as well as make it to the end-of-the-year ITTF World Tour Finals.

    According to the prospectus for the tournament, any player entering for the tournament will agree to abide by all ITTF rules and by the rules and regulations of the Organising Committee.

  • University don tasks media on coverage of rural areas

    Mr Monday Goshit, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, University of Jos, has charged the Nigerian media to ensure effective coverage of rural communities.
    Goshit gave the charge  in an interview with the Mr Monday Goshit in Jos on Wednesday.
    “The living conditions in the rural areas are very appalling. The people do not have even the most basic of human needs, but these hardships are not reported because the media hardly reflect these horrible situations,” he said.
    He regretted that the rural areas only get a mention when a big shot is visiting them or during emergencies like epidemic or violence.

     

    While noting that the current government is working to change Nigerians’ negative attitudes that had stalled the nation’s growth over the years, he expressed fear that the initiatives may not succeed “unless the rural dwellers are carried along and made to participate”.

     

    “World Bank reports have always indicated that more than 70 per cent of the population live in the rural areas.
    “The reports have also confirmed that most of those people live in poverty-stricken conditions.
    “We cannot move forward and succeed as a nation if that huge segment of the population is left behind because, ultimately, the success or otherwise of the drive to reduce poverty will be determined by the impact on such rural poor,” he said.
    Goshit lauded the Federal Government’s moves to diversify the economy and minimise over-dependence on the oil sector, but wondered how that dream could come to fruition if the rural farmer was not encouraged to produce enough to sustain his family and also export.

     

    “Aside agriculture, the solid minerals sector is also being considered as an alternative foreign exchange earner, but if we do not report developments in the rural areas where most of the mining activities take place, success will be difficult because policy makers will not be properly guided,” he said.

     

    The university don noted that the media was concentrating “too much” on politics and the lives of the elites.
    “Politics seem to do dominate most discourse on radio and in the newspapers.
    “Journalists chase sensational stories that concern a very few number of persons, while leaving out major issues that affect the lives of people,” he said.
    Goshit recalled that most rural communities in Plateau had come down with cholera and other waterborne diseases like gastroenthritis owing to lack of good water and basic sanitation in the villages.

     

    “Unfortunately, we hardly hear of these deprivations. We only hear of the consequences when they reach frightening dimensions and become epidemics,” he said.

     

    The lecturer called for more human interest stories that would reflect other areas of life outside politics, and stressed the need for journalists to report issues like the effects of the lack of roads and bridges, as well as the need for strong markets where farmers could sell their produce.

     

    “There are also farming, hunting and fishing festivals and competitions in some rural communities which should be highlighted to encourage the rural dwellers to have a sense of belonging,” he said.

     

    Goshit said that the nation risk total apathy from the rural dwellers, who had continued to feel that they were only remembered for electoral purposes and quickly forgotten after elections are won

  • A minister’s tirade on media

    Two top officials of the Buhari regime had cause last week to appraise the role of the media in the current war against corruption. The leadership of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, which visited Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir David Lawal, was told of the major role of the media in ensuring the success of the war against corruption even as he urged them not to be used as a tool to discredit the campaign.

    At a different forum, Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed who had been holding interactive sessions with a broad spectrum of the media to solicit support for the graft war, must have shocked his audience when he said corruption was fighting back through the media. Hear him: “Well I can tell you that corruption is already fighting back and it is fighting dirty. Sponsored articles have started to appear in the newspapers and in the social media. ‘Talking Heads’ have started making the rounds in the electronic media, all deriding the fight against corruption and the government”

    The minister further underscored the seriousness of the allegation when he vowed that no amount of media or other attacks by pseudo-analysts or hack writers will stop the train of the anti-corruption fight.

    Mohammed is entitled to his views on the motive and driving objective of the articles and comments which he considers inimical to the corruption crusade. It is not out of place for the accused, some other vested interests and all those scared that the war could still get at their doorsteps to take measures including the most ignoble to weaken the momentum of the fight. It is also within the run of events that those accused will have their own perspectives of the matter which they are entitled to push forth through any means available to them including the media.

    No doubt, a campaign against corruption of the magnitude that has been embarked upon by the government is bound to stir up controversy. It cannot be expected to do any less. Opinions and perceptions are also bound to differ depending on how the public sees the prosecution of the war. All these are irreducible decimals in a democracy that guarantees the fundamental rights of the citizens.

    It is therefore vital that in the fight against corruption, the inalienable rights of the citizens to freedom of expression are neither trampled upon nor abridged under the guise of specious allegations. Those who harbour contrary views on the direction of the campaign must not be blackmailed into abandoning them by a government that just rode to power through opposition. One only hopes this is not another attempt to muzzle dissent. But, it is one thing to allege that vested interests are fighting back to scuttle the overall success of the war and a different kettle of fish to find in the media, a willing tool for such unpatriotic undertaking.

    There are fundamental flaws in such a mindset. The first is the assumption that the media can easily be corrupted to scuttle the war against graft. Its corollary is that any or every article or opinion which in the views of the minister is critical of the war, is sponsored and therefore an evidence of corruption fighting back. If this point is stretched further, it could be misconstrued that all those who express reservations on the direction of the current war are motivated by pecuniary considerations.

    That would amount to a sweeping and uncharitable allegation; a big insult on the credibility of writers. For, it conveys the annoying impression that commentators and writers are that cheap; not propelled by their conscience when they express opinions on some of the deficits of the corruption campaign.

    There is also the inherently faulty assumption that the media is the only institution that can be so compromised and deployed by corruption to fight back. This is not borne out by extant realities. In verity, there is a surfeit of other institutional mechanisms that could be deployed to compromise the war. It is not the media that are responsible for the long delays in prosecuting offenders (some of them former governors) for about eight years now. Neither are they liable for the corruption that is still going on now in high and low places nor responsible for the fight corruption staged during the last governorship election in Bayelsa State.  So why single them out for selective attack even when they are being cajoled by the same government for support in the fight? One finds in this, a contradiction of sorts. Or is the allegation meant to intimidate the media to do the bidding of the government in convicting the accused outside the laws of the land or cover up allegations of bias?

     The other assumption is that any and every article that does not tally with what the government considers favourable to the corruption war is an evidence of corruption fighting back. If it is that easy to corner the media to do the bidding of the highest payer, the minister would have been in a better position to achieve that after his series of interactions with a broad spectrum of key media men and women. After all, the government’s financial chest is much larger than that of all those who are being prosecuted for one infraction or the other put together.

    If after such interactions we still find a residue of opinions on what needed to be fine tuned for the war to command wider acceptability, the inevitable conclusion is that there are more to such opinions than corruption seeking to fight back. That is the reality the minister has to face and very squarely too. We now face the danger of reducing the media to a victim in the chessboard of the war against corruption more so, given the deleterious consequences such banal profiling will impose in the performance of their duties of keeping the government in check. We may inadvertently be clearing the way for anarchy or the dictatorship the minister alluded to.

    There is the more grave risk of such labelling blackmailing writers to the point of inability to comment freely. If you argue that it is wrong to fight the corruption war outside the laws of the country, you stand accused of aiding corruption to fight back. Corruption is fighting back when the inherent dangers of convicting the accused in the court of public opinion or issues of double standards are raised.

    It is also corruption at war when you question why some of the accused were allowed to go home after refunding some money while others who were granted bail by the courts are being denied freedom. And the government comes out boldly to endorse such. I guess it was corruption spoiling for skirmish when the minister had the effrontery to ask “What are we even talking about. Is the human rights of the 55 persons more important than the human rights of 170 million Nigerians”, in answer to reporter’s question on the alleged looting of N1.34 trillion between 2006-2013. Yet, it is a legal principle that it is better to set free 100 accused persons than convict one innocent person.

    One would have been recruited to scuttle the corruption war if you pointed out that the current war as desirable as it is, is limited in scope and therefore its overall success ratio is bound to be circumscribed. It is constrained by the fact that it targets the symptoms and not the roots of corruption. It fights corruption after the offence has been committed to the neglect of the systemic dysfunctions that propel, sustain and reinforce the malfeasance. We may succeed in jailing some corrupt people, recover some funds and send fear to future offenders. But all this would still fall below what is required to holistically and permanently wrestle the endemic cankerworm to the ground.

    Fighting the manifestations of corruption rather than its root causes will have no answer to the moral dissonance between the civic public and the primordial realm. It will prove inherently deficient in explaining why those who leave public offices poor are derided by members of their primordial attachment while the smart ones who helped themselves are hailed. It will neither account for, nor sufficiently address the do- or-die politics that has become part of our political culture. Nor will it provide permanent remedy to that which activates bitter competition among the dominant groups to control the resources at the centre. These are the real issues. The appropriate therapeutic response to corruption will be one that is multi-dimensional; targeting attitudinal and value change through a total overhaul of this country structurally.

  • INEC to meet with RECs, political parties, others

    INEC to meet with RECs, political parties, others

    Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will be holding separate meetings with the various stakeholders in electoral process.

    The meetings are scheduled to hold from Tuesday, 19th January to Thursday, 21th January 2016.

    The meeting with the RECs is scheduled for Tuesday, while the meeting with the leadership of the Political Parties will hold on Wednesday, 20th.

    The last in the series of consultations will be held with the CSOs and the Media on Thursday, 21th, January 2016.

  • Year of convergence for sales, media

    Year of convergence for sales, media

    • Online, mobile video advertising investment to increase

    Millward Brown, a research agency, has predicted that both sales and media will be united by marketers in its annual digital and media predictions for 2016. The forecast also stated that more brands will invest heavily in online, particularly mobile video advertising, in the new year.

    For the eighth consecutive year, the company is providing marketers with a clear guide on navigating the challenges and opportunities of the next 12 months.

    The annual digital & media predictions outline the need to optimise video and mobile advertising, evaluate connected TV opportunities and develop inspiring branded content.

    According to the agency, one prediction in the 2016 report identifies the opportunity for marketers to develop clearer consumer journey maps, from awareness to purchase, in order to better integrate sales and media touchpoints.

    The agency said the opportunity will become possible as digital platforms blur to an unprecedented degree the lines between media and sales disciplines, allowing marketers to optimise the consumer journey more than ever before.

    Accordingly, three key trends are expected to drive this opportunity. One, the marketing research stated that the consumer journey is becoming device and channel agnostic as people buy at the moment and in the way that best suits them. Secondly, the transformation of e-commerce sites from pure sales channels into media touch-points (where people advertise) and thirdly, the transformation of ad creative that links directly to purchase opportunities on digital channels.

    “Marketers who develop detailed consumer journey maps will be able to follow consumers along this new path to purchase, allowing them to identify the most powerful touchpoints from both sales and marketing along the way. This will give brand owners the power to deliver the seamless brand experience that consumers desire and drive brand, market share and sales outcomes, simultaneously and in harmony,” the forecast stated.

    Meanwhile, the Global Brand Director for Digital at the agency, Duncan Southgate, also said: “Sales and media touchpoints have traditionally been separate, but changes to the digital landscape and consumer behaviour now allow marketers to unify them for the first time,” “In  2016, we expect advertisers to map marketing contexts to an integrated consumer journey so that sales and brand-building content complement rather than compete with each other.”

    Millward Brown anticipates additional important changes in the media landscape and describes in the 2016 predictions how marketers can “get media right”.

    The agency predicts that brands will invest more heavily in online and particularly mobile video advertising in 2016, yet many will waste millions by neglecting to adapt content across formats.

    Also, connected TV (or Smart TV) is expected to take over the television viewing experience, bringing profound changes to the way people consume content while experimentation with workable addressable TV advertising models is expected to begin, although live TV advertising will remain dominant for now.

    In a bid to overcome low digital advertising receptivity, the forecast stated that more brands will become content creators. “As marketing moves from disruption to attraction, inspiring content marketing will move up the corporate agenda,” it stated.

    However, the forecast stated that smart marketers will involve digital considerations much earlier in the creative process and pre-test more assiduously.

    “The recent rise of ad blocking software means that consumer receptivity will be a big issue in 2016. Brands that fail to target consumers appropriately adapt content across formats or rely solely on paid advertising contentare unlikely to build engagement and drive sales. The ability to connect in digital platforms at a time when consumers are willing to do so, and with great content in a format that is not intrusive, will separate the successful marketers from those that simply annoy,” said Southgate.

  • Presidential media chat and journalistic faux pas

    SIR: I had looked forward to President Muhammadu Buhari’s inaugural media chat with gung-ho spirit. And unlike some in the past, the chat gave the participants the latitude to ask questions on the go, and the president, showed that he knew the territory and didn’t unnecessarily skirt on issues that needed forthright answers.

    I expected the panel of journalists to have done better than they did (no disrespect intended) but I got the impression that there were only two journalists on the panel that night – Kayode Akintemi of Channels Television and Mannir Dan Ali of Daily Trust. These two were on top of the journalistic game.

    The chance to interact and quiz statesmen whose policies shape our world, either good or bad, is a chance of a lifetime that must be used well. Nigerians watching do not expect to see journalists either toadying up to such statesmen or asking questions based on canard.

    It didn’t strike me that some questions were properly researched especially the one on national security which almost ruined the show for me because the president had to teach a journalist the importance of national security, and the danger of allowing indecent behaviour to thrive in society.

    I learned from an early age to be alert when engaging with two classes of professionals, a well groomed military officer and a lawyer for they are tenacious, and many have helped shaped societies positively.

    * Interacting with them on national issues by journalists therefore isn’t just a handout; it should be a strategic investment with huge returns possibly to lift the hopes of people.,  I expected to hear piercing questions, the Tim Sebastian, and Stephen Sackur type that unsettle even interview veterans like a Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah.

    After all, soldiers have thick skins, can take the heat, their training welcomes challenging questions, but the research team for this media chat didn’t test the president enough. Even though I didn’t expect to see an axe-grinding exercise, after all Buhari is not a Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, I expected questions to make him stutter a bit but got none. That works if the home work was done well.

    It was bad enough for me that the President had to advise media gurus against jumping to sensational reporting instead of investigative journalism to reveal truth in their reporting. Journalists should know better, at least tested hands know when not to overplay the card, when to ask the eyeball-to-eyeball questions and when to balk for national security.

    The commission for media chat if there is any, should make the next media chat effervescent by restricting the chat to an area of specific interests, say foreign affairs or international diplomacy and the economy, etc., etc., etc., and not a hodgepodge of all national issues in limited time. Consideration should be given to subjects of current topicality at that time.

    The president may not have scored high on statistics like a Bill Clinton, but he engaged in an effective heart-oriented harangue which to this writer is better when compared to others in the past when grandiose statements were made to compete with the ‘grandiosest’  already made.

     

    • Simon Abah,

    Port  Harcourt, Rivers State.

  • The Senate Media Bill

    •It harks to Neanderthal times and should get the “dead on arrival” treatment

    To those who thought that the Newspaper (Amendment) Act of 1964, the Public Officers (Protection Against False Accusation) Decree No. 11 of 1976 and its derivative, Decree 4 of 1984, had been consigned to the footnotes of a dark era in Nigeria’s history, the Senate has sent a chilling warning:  Not so fast.

    It is proposing, under the rubric of “A Bill for an Act to Prohibit Frivolous Petitions and other Matters connected therewith” a law that would incorporate the sanctions of the obnoxious enactments aforementioned to punish persons who, according to its sponsor, Ibn Na’Allah (APC, Kebbi South), file “frivolous petitions” against other persons or institutions, and thereby thus cause the government to waste valuable time and resources conducting needless investigations.

    The Bill, which has passed its second reading in the Senate, has several strands.

    The first strand generally makes it an offence, punishable by a jail term of two years or a fine  of N4 million, to publish in any medium an allegation or statement or petition with intent to discredit or set the public against any persons, groups or institutions of government

    The second is aimed specifically at social media.  It criminalises the transmission with knowing falsity on any social media platform any abusive statement intended to set the public against persons or groups or legally established institutions.  The penalty on conviction is a two-year jail term, or a fine of N2 million, or both.

    Under the third strand, submitting any petition or complaint designed to set off any inquest or investigation is punishable by a jail term of six months, unless the petition is backed by a signed affidavit.

    The fourth strand provides that anyone who uses, or causes to be used any petition not backed by a sworn affidavit confirming the content to be true and correct stands on conviction to be jailed for two years and to pay a fine of N200,000, or both

    Deliberate publication of falsehood, especially injurious falsehood, betrays a fundamental obligation of journalism:  To provide a truthful and accurate account of the day’s events.  Even when they are engaged in monitoring the use and abuse of power and privilege, as they are enjoined to do, the media must not wantonly impugn the reputation and credit of those they report on.

    Those who feel aggrieved when the media beam the searchlight on them can always seek redress through the laws of defamation.  That process is not perfect.  But it is the one that has served democracy best.  Any other recourse is subversive of the freedom of the press, which is in the final analysis to the right to impart and receive ideas and information, and also implies the right to learn and to know.

    These rights belong to the public. They define what it means to be a citizen.

    In seeking to abridge or constrain them, the Bill before the Senate is in fatal collision with Section 22 of the Constitution, which consecrates the right of the media to uphold the duty and accountability of the government to the people.

    Faced with widespread condemnation of the Bill, a spokesperson for the Senate, Aliyu Sabi, says the whole thing had been misunderstood and that its real objective is to protect all individuals and institutions, including journalists and users of the social media.

    This is pure subterfuge.  The real intent of the Bill is to protect public officials and institutions from public scrutiny by emasculating the media.  It serves no public purpose whatsoever.  There is no redeeming value to it, just as there was no redeeming value to the 1964 Newspaper (Amendment) Act, Decree 11 of 1976, and Decree 4 of 1984.

    It is reassuring that the House of Representatives has disavowed this obnoxious Bill.

    It is immeasurably more reassuring that President Muhammadu Buhari, who promulgated the infamous Decree 4 when he was military Head of State, has made it clear that if a Bill with the contours of the one now before the Senate gets to his desk, it will be given the “dead on arrival” treatment.

  • How community media can aid growth, by Ambode’s aide

    Community media will drive grassroots development, if properly harnessed, Special Adviser to Lagos State on Communications Mr Kehinde Bamigbetan has said.

    Bamigbetan spoke at a workshop for community media practitioners at Ikeja.

    The event tagged Community media: Tool for vibrant democratic governance, was attended by practitioners of community journalism in the print, electronic and social media.

    It was held in collaboration with GEMS3, a tax consultancy firm.

    Bamigbetan said a vibrant community media could drive developmental programmes.

    According to him, it is the community media that really connect with the masses and masses’ expectation from government at the council level can easily be communicated.

    He urged community media practitioners to always monitor activities of local government administrators especially in the area of budget implementation.

    “Community media draw attention of people in governance to what is missing at the grassroots; they relay the opinion of people to governments and public institutions. They also create and mould the perception of the people in the community about corporate organisations and government. So, they are so important to development and our plan is to try and bring them back. Community media drove developmental projects during the colonial days,” he said.

    According to him, community media are germane to achieving the mega-city status.

    He said: “We need to bring back the community media to make our democracy vibrant and effective to the man on the street. Our role is to create the conducive environment for community media practitioners to do business.

    “Most importantly, we are talking of a system where people at the grassroots are carried along and understand their roles in achieving the Lagos of our dream.”

  • We ’ve no plan to gag media, says Saraki

    We ’ve no plan to gag media, says Saraki

    •’Gender-based violence least prosecuted offence’ 

    Senate President Bukola Saraki has clarified his stance on alleged plans by the Senate to gag the social media.

    He said the public got the information wrong, saying, “there was nothing like anti-social media bill”.

    He emphasised that there was no intention at all to gag the media, adding that the Senate wanted to prevent frivolous petitions submitted to the Upper Chamber.

    The Senate President spoke  yesterday while opening a seminar, entitled: “Implementation of Guidelines on Gender-Based Violence and Young Persons”, organised by Women Arise in Abuja.

    Saraki said: “I want to reassure you, there is no bill called the anti-social media bill.”

    However, he stated that “what we have before us is the bill of frivolous petitions. Generally, when we debate at the second reading, we only debate principles of a bill, not details of a bill. Unfortunately, in the bill of frivolous petitions, there are things which I will call obnoxious sections; these sections would not see light of the day by the time the bill is finished.”

    He assured the public of openness and transparency, adding that “it was not our intention to gag any social media at all”.

    Speaking on gender-based violence, Saraki stated that it  is the least prosecuted offence in the country.

    He lamented that if the nation could stand as one to fight the scourge, it would soon become history.

    The senator said there was urgent need for serious advocacy against sexual assaults, especially among youths.

    Saraki stated that about 60 per cent of the nation’s population are predominantly youths, thus urgent need for concerted efforts to stop gender-based violence.

    “Truly if we want change in our society, this is the change we must all desire. We must all decide as a nation to stop gender based violence. Members of the Eight Senate would play its role to discourage gender based violence,” he added.

    Earlier, Chairman Senate Committee on Federal Capital Territory, Senator Dino Melaye called for increased advocacy against the violence.

    President, Women Arise Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin said the event was put together to disseminate guidelines on the violence through contacts with local responsible agencies, youth and youth serving organisations in the country.

    She stated that the non-governmental organisation was committed to protecting young persons who were vulnerable to the scourge.