By Lizzy Carr, Bauchi
Nigerian female journalists have committed themselves to promoting issues around women participation in politics as the country prepares for the 2023 general elections.
They made the commitment at a two-day skills enhancing, capacity building and mentoring session organised by International Press Centre IPC in collaboration with the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ) for female journalists in Abuja on Thursday.
The journalists observed that they need to project the voices of women politicians to discourage gender marginalisation in the electoral process.
Hajara Leman of News Agency of Nigeria said she was leaving the session with skills on fact-checking and use of other online applications to identify fake news. “I can now fake check news I see on social media, images and websites to ascertain their authenticity before going to press”.
Hanna Abba from Kano said the session is an key-opener on how to project the voices of female politicians and educate women voters on the electoral process.
The president of NAWOJ, Ladi Bala said female journalists need to set the agenda for gender inclusion and that of persons with disabilities in the electoral process and after elections. “The training is coming at a time when female journalists need to enhance their capacity on how to fact check fake news; we need to help female politicians to better equip them and counter fake news.”
The Executive Director of IPC, Mr Lanre Arogundade said the session is to enhance the profession of journalists on how to engage in impactful and public interest reporting of the ongoing electoral processes in the 2023 elections.
IPC as the lead partner and the Institute for Media and Society under component 4 support to media of the European union support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria project, sought to make the media catalysts of credible elections
Key objectives of the training were to strengthen media professional capacity to deal with electoral misinformation and disinformation and the improvement of media engagement in promoting women, youths and marginalised groups in politics.
In a presentation on impactful reporting of electoral processes and 2023 elections titled: “Focusing on Issues and Telling stories that matter”, Mr Taiwo Obe, Founder, Journalism Clinic told the female journalists to tailor their reportage towards inclusiveness by focusing on issues concerning women, persons with disabilities and other vulnerable groups.
“Focus should be on pre voting,and voter education and the voting day”.
He also took participants through the use of mobile applications to facilitate their work.
Mrs Moji Makanjuola, executive Director, International Society of Media in Public Health took participants through “The Electoral processes and 2023 elections” while according priority to issues of women and underrepresented.
She emphasized on the importance of verifying facts before going to press and stories should be captured from the human angle.
Also, “Factual accuracy and combating fake news: The place of fact checking and data use in reporting of 2023 elections”, was taken by Mr David Ajikobi, Editor Africa-Check. He took participants through practical sessions on how to fact check fake news, images ,videos and websites.
