Daily Trust Foundation Holds Workshop on Investigative Reporting

L-R: Executive Director, Tito TV, Oto-Abasi Tom; Board Member DTF, Dr. Nuhu Yakubu; Commissioner for Information, Comrade Ini Ememobong; Fidelis Mbah of Aljazeera and Programmes Manager, DTF, Dr. Theophilus Abbah at the opening ceremony of the Workshop

 

Priscilla Akpanettot

Daily Trust Foundation (DTF) has undertaken the training of select journalists in South-South, Nigeria on broadcast investigation. The 3-day training which began on Wednesday, April 3 to Friday, April 5, 2024 was held at Watbridge Hotel and Suites in Uyo.

Addressing participants at the Workshop, a Board member of the Foundation and former Rector at the Kaduna State Polytechnic, Dr. Nuru Yakubu said that the objective of the workshop was to bring together journalists from the South-South geopolitical zone and train them in the skills of broadcast investigation and thus, motivate them to do more.

“We conduct these Workshops because we believe that journalists must learn new skills, if they must carry out the onerous responsibility the Constitution heaps upon them”, he explained.

Comrade Ini Ememobong giving an address of welcome

He furthered that an ignorant reporter or editor would neither be able to hold government accountable, as enshrined in the constitution, nor be effective in the discharge of their responsibilities as gatekeepers hence, the need for regular knowledge acquisition.

Justifying the training of broadcast journalists, the Board member submitted that radio, television and livestreams on social media platforms travel wider than print publications and could be more impactful.

“If most of the investigations published in print and online were done by television or radio platforms, their impacts would have been totally different”, he stated, and charged participants on effective utilization of the Workshop.

Dr. Theophilus Abbah in one of his sessions with the participants

“It is the vision of the Foundation that broadcast journalists would do more investigative reporting in the interest of the growth of Nigeria…There can be no change except ills in the society are exposed. We must do the kind of journalism that is driven by values patriotism, nationalism, transparency and accountability”, he campaigned.

Welcoming participants to the Workshop, the State Commissioner for Information, Comrade Ini Ememobong described the training as an investment in the future and commended the Foundation for undertaking such gesture.

“When we invest in training, we invest in the future. The egalitarian nature of Daily Trust Foundation must be noted. You could still have gotten this funding and made it an in-house training with Daily Trust, but you are now training your competitors…you are training people without the fear that they would use the knowledge you have facilitated them to get to outdo you in the market”.

Ibanga Isine providing insights on investigations

“That is where the issue of adversarial collaboration comes in, because at the vendors hands, all your titles are competitors, but when we come into the democratisation processes of our country, the entire press becomes one family, and that is where the collaboration is”, he noted.

He therefore called on participants to apply the knowledge gained from the training in the discharge of their work.

Daily Trust Foundation, according to Dr. Yakubu is the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) arm of Media Trust Group, owners of Daily Trust, Trust TV, Digital Trust, Trust Radio, Aminiya, and other specialized publications.

Participants at the Workshop

 

The Foundation has undertaken a number of humanitarian activities such as the provision of scholarships for female medical and nursing students; boreholes for communities lacking water; capacity building for women; support for orphanages; assistance to inmates in correctional centres through payment of fines for those without prison terms; remodeling of Primary Healthcare Clinic; and as well as capacity building for journalists.

So far since 2017, over 700 journalists across Nigeria have been trained by the Foundation in investigative reporting with support from MacArthur Foundation. The Workshop is the third to be conducted in the South-South with participants from Bayelsa, Rivers, Edo, Delta, Cross River, and Akwa Ibom States

Resource persons at the Workshop were: Mr. Fidelis Mbah, a world-class investigative journalist whose media experiences span through the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Aljazeera and China Global Television Network (CGTN); Mr Isine Ibanga, an investigative reporter and winner, CNN and Wole Soyinka Award for investigative journalism; Programme Director, Daily Trust Foundation, Dr. Theophilus Abbah as well as Oto-Abasi Tom, Executive Director, Tito Television Studios.