In a world where almost every information is shrouded by an alarming level of internet fakery, YERWA EXPRESS NEWS trained and equipped a group of upcoming career journalists with the skills to be able to spot and bust them.
The two-day training was funded by MacArthur Foundation in collaboration with Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism under a Nigeria-wide collaborative media project, the C-Media Project.
Held in Maiduguri, capital of Borno, the training was meant to enhance the capacity of the journalists, 20 in number, on how to investigate corruption, track government spending and counter fake news.
Participants were drawn from news platforms working in Borno and Yobe, including bloggers and freelancers.
Kemi Busari, a multiple award-winning fact checker and investigative journalist with PREMIUM TIMES, who also heads DUBAWA, a fact-checking news medium, took the participants through budget tracking and probing of procurement.
He told the participants that these roles—of probing government procurement and spending—are essentially for journalists to play and that it is at the heart of the profession.
He and his colleague, Silas Jonathan, also a senior reporter with DUBAWA, trained the journalists on fact-check, including use of relevant tools and platforms to carry out their work.
Mr. Jonathan urged the participants to have a sharp eye for claims that are of public interest and ensure that they are accurate, by fact-checking them.
During the training, group assignments were given to the participants, the outcome of which leaves the facilitators impressed by the performance put into them.
The training was closed by an interactive session between the participants and the trainers, focusing largely on the need for continued engagement and mentorship after the two-day program.
Certificates of participation were issued to the participants, who described the training as impactful and promised to put the skills they had acquired into use.
They said this while thanking and commending YERWA EXPRESS NEWS for organizing the training.
‘We are hoping this workshop will serve as a turning point to us, to be able to explore our potentials in investigating public interest problems in our society, and the country at large,’ Yakubu Kirawa, one of the participants from NTA Maiduguri said, while commending YERWA EXPRESS NEWS.
Dahiru Usman from Kanem FM also said ‘this has become an eye opener for me, with this training I have developed more interest in investigation and fact checking.’
Abdulhamid Al-Gazali, the editor-in-chief of the organization, in his remarks at the end of training, commended the facilitators for making it up to the state despite the security situation.
He said, while thanking them, that ‘the essence of our job as we all know is the fact that our society is in the hands of few people who want to hide the truth from us, and if we want to move forward as a people, then we can only do that on the basis of truth.
‘Nigeria is still in this stage because of journalists; otherwise we would have still been in the hands of the military. Whatever you think of yourself, what you do is at the very heart of the society. Beyond bringing out the truth to the public, beyond tracking spending and other activities of government, we must not forget the level of public ignorance.
‘It has reached a record-time high where people virtually don’t know anything and it is manifesting itself in how we fall for such things as very simplistic Ponzi schemes in droves,’ Al-Gazali said.
He also advised the participants to practice the things they have learned ‘because after two to three days these things have a way of being forgotten, so practice them.’
