The Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has charged the media to go beyond the traditional method of reportage but be more proactive and upscale their method through advocacy.
The General Manager, Corporate Communications and Zonal Coordination, NCDMB, Dr. Ginah O. Ginah while speaking in Abuja on Thursday at the Nigerian Content Capacity Building Workshop for Media Stakeholders stated that
there is currently a shift in energy usage to renewable energy and as such the media should also follow the trend and change the narrative through advocacy in reportage.
“So today the question is the media has been giving us our traditional support, but we are now in an unstable environment in a renewable transition, so are we still going to continue the traditional media support? Or we are going to shift gear to something more proactive and effective?
“So that is what has made this workshop more remarkable and so important so we want a change from the traditional media reportage to advocacy, advocating to the rest of the world while Nigeria has to use transitional fuel to the renewable energy”.
“We have to be more proactive this time around, not just waiting for the releases from the NCDMB but running ahead of the operations people, the people implementing the Act, creating openings where we can also follow, so that has made this workshop so much important”.
Ginah noted that the theme of the workshop: Sustaining Nigerian Content Amidst Shifting Energy Landscape: The Role of the Media is apt and timely to educate the media, challenges it to tell the boards stories correctly, inform the public about what they are doing and her achievement to sensitize the public.
“It has become even more important to re-educate the media to this new alignment, we are at a cross road, so the goose that is laying our golden egg is being threatened which means we have to ramp up to this challenge and in doing this, we need the media more than ever before to be able to tell our stories more correctly and the new direction that the federal government wants us to go”.
He added that we are now entering into unstable environment, in which there is a shift in energy usage to renewable energy and our law and indeed the sustainace of Nigerian economy is based on oil and gas and the new shift is threatening our dominance in the oil and gas industry at least in Africa, our main source of revenue.
He however assured that the Board will ensure adequate training and media tools for journalists to enhance their skills and reportage.
“We have taken notes of tools and trainings for journalists, we are going to come up with solutions from that, one of our consultant alluded to the shortage of skills for our media stakeholders”.