Stallion Times Trains 40 Journalists, CSOs On Tracking Constituency Projects
Stallion Times Media Services has trained about 40 Journalists, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) on how to track constituency projects in Kogi State.
It was gathered reports that the training was part of efforts to enhance accountability on duty bearers in the area of constituency projects both at state and federal levels.
The 2-day capacity building workshop which ended on Wednesday, in Lokoja was conducted on the participatory governance and media literacy project tagged “Get Involve, Dialogue and Improve (G-DRIP) with support from the Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism, and funded by the MacArthur Foundation.
The objectives of the capacity building workshop include but not limited to building the capacity of Media/CSOs on Budget processes and procedures and to improve journalists’ capacity on writing investigative stories on constituency projects in Kogi state
members of the union and other journalists in the state.
“This training will indeed empower more journalists to track not just constituency projects, but other any project that is contained in the state’s budget.”
He then urged the participants to hit the ground and track abandoned projects in various constituencies for public interest.
Kogi Non-governmental Organization Network (KONGONET), Chairman, Ambassador Idris Ozovehe Muraina, represented by the Secretary, Ben Joshua said with this capacity building training CSOs skills have been improved to hold government accountable.
Joshua, a participant thanked Stallion Times for the initiative.
“As a civil society advocate, this training has immensely added value to my job because my organizations’ major thematic area is good governance.”
“Some NGOs do not know they can also track abandoned project by studying the budget and asking relevant stakeholders involved, but now, we know,” he added.
Abigail Oyenibi , a journalists with Radio Kogi said the training has answered the many questions in the minds of journalists in areas of abandoned projects.
“With this training we now know the documents for tracking a project to a logical conclusion.
“Before now I have never engaged in an in-depth investigation to write a report, but now I will definitely go beyond surface reporting,” she added.
Participants at the training workshop were drawn from CSOs working in the area of People with Disability, Women, Children and Vulnerable people, Human Rights, Advocacy, Civic Education, and the Media.