Lokoja – Journalists in the country have been charged to track the implementation of the Federal and state annual budgets to ensure accountability and development across the country.
The charge was made at a two-day training workshop organised for selected journalists in Kogi State by Stallion Times.
The theme of the two-Day Training Workshop is Budget Tracking and Reporting held in Lokoja.
Speaking, Mr Isiyaku Ahmed, Editor-in-chief, Stallion Times, expressed regrets that most journalists in Nigeria were not doing enough to track and report budget implementations in the country.
He said that the development has been given room for corruption and under development in some parts of Nigeria.
He expressed displeasure over low coverage of constituency projects across the country by the media, saying that the purpose of constituency projects was to ensure development at the grassroot level.
“Until journalists rise to the occasion of tracking constituency projects and reporting overall budget implementations, there can never be any meaningful development in our communities.
“Budgets are meant to bring about growth and development in our communities but as long as the citizens including us, Journalists, are not interested in what happens after budgets are passed, the desired results will definitely elude us, ” he said.
According to him, the essence of the training workshop is to awaken the consciousness in journalists about the need to track and report budget implementations for meaningful development in the country.
Ahmed said it was expected that after the training, journalists should be seen reporting actively on all ongoing constituency projects in the state.
The Chairman of Kogi State Council of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr Momoh Adeiza-Jimoh, described the training workshop as “apt and very timely.”
“The topic of this training workshop is very apt and timely as it will at the end impact on us and build our capacities as journalists to do our job well.
“It’s unfortunate that we have been going to House of Assembly for budget passages but thereafter hardly go for follow ups as to how the budgets are being implemented by the state government, ” he lamented.
The NUJ chairman charged participants to take the training seriously, to acquire the necessary knowledge on how to track and report budgets implementations for the good of the Nigerian public.
Two resource persons,
Mr Henry Omokhaye and Mr Steven Salawu took turns to take participants through the process of budget making and its importance to the nation.
While Omokhaye spoke on Pre-Training Assessment and Budget Development Process, Salawu spoke on Budget Mainstreaming in Story Writing. (vitalnewsngr.com)
