The Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) has tasked the Media Rights Agenda (MRA) to train more journalists on the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act to enable the media to take full advantage of the Act to ensuring accountability at all levels of government.
The Executive Director of WSCIJ, Mrs. Motunrayo Alaka said this when she led her team to MRA’s office, as partners of the Collaborative Media (CMEDIA) Project, supported by MacArthur Foundation.
Alaka said the training on FOI will help the media to explore the ongoing changes in the political landscape to drive home the need for accountability from the incoming administration using the FOI Act as a tool.
She also announced that targeted training for partners to address financial reporting, investigative journalism, and programming will hold in the course of the year.
Addressing the WSCIJ team, Edetaen Ojo, the Executive Director of MRA, who lamented the low usage of the FOI Act by media organizations said MRA will train journalists on the Act and support the trained journalists to utilize what they learnt in the practical usage of the Act for the remainder of the CMEDIA project period.
Ojo said “we plan to carry out training on using the FOI Act for investigative reporting for journalists in the North, South East and South West in separate workshops and mentor those trained to be using the Act in their reporting.”
He also mentioned that MRA had distributed 100 copies of the Act to each of the 26 other partners in the project and was prepared to give additional copies to any of the partners doing workshops or training and requiring the Act.
The CMEDIA project provided an opportunity to make an impact and collaborate with the strong collective of media organisations and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in the 27-organisations strong partnership.