A two day workshop on election monitoring has ended in Oshogbo, the Osun state capital with a call on media practitioners to strive towards effective and efficient coverage of future elections processes in Nigeria.
The training programme brought together managers and top editors of News, Current Affairs and Programmes of Radio and Television stations from across the Southern States of Nigeria to strengthen capacity on electoral coverage including developing and implementing code of conduct, coverage plans, resource sharing and innovations among others.
Addressing participants at the end of the workshop, the Executive Director, Institute for Media and Society Dr. Akin Akingbulu called for collaboration among media organizations in election coverage and other activities to protect the Nigeria’s democracy.
Dr Akingbulu who expressed satisfaction with the quality of ideas and cooperation among the participants, urged them to sustain the synergy to achieve the desired goals.
He urged media organization owners to invest more on social media technology to meet emerging challenges in news coverage and dissemination.
In her presentation, one of the facilitators and former General Manager of Purity FM Awka, Mrs. Miriam Menkiti stressed the need for proper planning of coverage of all the election processes including pre and post election activities.
Mrs. Menkiti emphasized the need for adequate deployment of personnel and logistics as well as generating necessary information about political parties, candidates and activities of the Electoral Body.
In their separate reactions, some of the participants including Mr. Bon Woke of River State Television and Mrs. Adeola Adetodu of Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State while commending the quality and efficient organization of the workshop, urged other stakeholders to partner the institute in such capacity building programmes to enable more practitioners to benefit.
