Report agric effectively, group tells journalists

The programme coordinator of the organization, Peter Michael Egwudah, said that the training has become necessary to enable journalists report agriculture effectively. He lamented that Nigeria is not able to feed its citizens as it has continued to import food from other countries.Egwudah stressed that agriculture still remains the largest sector of the Nigerian economy […]

The programme coordinator of the organization, Peter Michael Egwudah, said that the training has become necessary to enable journalists report agriculture effectively. He lamented that Nigeria is not able to feed its citizens as it has continued to import food from other countries.
Egwudah stressed that agriculture still remains the largest sector of the Nigerian economy accounting for 40.2% of GDP as against 15.8% for oil and gas; and employing 2/3 of the entire labour force, noting that production hurdles have worked hard to stifle the performance of the sector.
Tom Odemwingie, former editor guardian Newspaper in his presentation on food security and developmental approach to agric reporting, said journalists should explore various ways in which investment in agriculture addresses sundry challenges such as poverty, food insecurity, unemployment, gender imbalance and how these can be emphasized in stories instead of mere statistics and figures that do not tell the stories.
 Yusuf Alli, Managing Editor, northern region of the Nation newspaper, in his presentation stressed that journalists should use the power of the media to influence changes and to educate people in discussing and reporting development issues.
Alli reminded journalists of their responsibilities in order to set the stage to secure their commitment to adopt developmental approach to reporting agriculture.
 Presenting a paper on Social media: Potentials for development communication, Tunde Aremu said journalists should take advantage of other avenues such as facebook, youtube, twitter and live streaming to get their reports out to the reading public locally and internationally.