The International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) and the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) FCT Correspondents’ Chapel have finalised their agreement to collaborate on the training of journalists, particularly in the fields of data journalism, fact-checking, open source intelligence, and multimedia journalism.
The Chapel Chairman, Mr. Jide Oyekunle, expanded on the collaboration on Friday by reiterating the necessity of strategic partnership and collaboration in the planning of routine training and capacity building for journalists.
Oyekunle, who made this comment during a visit to the ICIR office in Abuja, hinted that the training was intended to improve and validate the members’ knowledge and reportorial skills and to familiarise them with the use of data and statistics in news writing as opposed to the more conventional methods of storytelling and narrative journalism.
He said that the relationship between the ICIR and the media as a whole has been positive and cordial, which gave rise to the partnership in question.
He claims that the centre has over the years held government officials and authorities to account through investigative reporting, significantly and remarkably raising the bar for journalism excellence.
“We are here to formally ask for your organization’s partnership and collaboration in organising recurring training and capacity building for our members, who work for various media organisations.
“Our agenda and programmes revolve around training and capacity building, which we hope to accomplish in the first three years of our term in office. When it comes to the necessary training for media professionals, we are aware that ICIR set the bar high and holds the card.
The training we’re referring to includes data journalism, open source investigation, fact checking, multimedia journalism, and many other fields that have now come to define contemporary journalism.
As a result of the technological revolution and media pluralism, “journalists today have to produce stories for a multimedia world, putting reporters under unnecessary pressure and serving as an effective weapon against misinformation, disinformation, and fake news,” he said.
The Managing Editor of ICIR, Mr. Hamzat Ajibola, thanked the NUJ delegation for visiting the centre and said that it demonstrated the Chapel’s new leadership’s commitment to the goal of improving the face of the journalism profession.
According to him, ICIR was founded with the intention of ensuring positive change for the nation and establishing a standard for ethical and responsible journalism through training.
According to Hamzat, “Our mission is just to go into the news room and train people about different areas of journalism as many as are willing to be trained. In 2012 when we registered as an NGO.
“I can tell you that we are very excited and ready to work with your chapel moving forward. We are happy that you are here.
“You mentioned the various areas we need to address, and I believe they are all crucial. Because we purposefully have a data department, we are indeed very strong in data journalism. We now understand that journalism is now data and that this was not an accident. One cannot exist without the other.
Agema Gloria, the programme manager for ICIR, stated that the centre was prepared to train Chapel members and urged the journalists to use their newly acquired skills in their various newsrooms after the training.
She claims that “multimedia journalism training, for example, is so simple that once you have that training, you should be able to do a lot of things with your colleagues and train a lot of people.”
