Chima Azubuike, Gombe
A Development Expert, Kenneth Okoineme, has urged health reporters to focus on consistent tracking and utilization of budget, adding that by so doing elected officials will be more proactive.
Okoineme stated this on Thursday, during a one day training on budget tracking and utilization for health correspondents in Gombe, organized by the four consortium; Aisha Buhari Foundation, International Society of Media in Public Health, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy centre, and Network for Health Equity and Development.
According to Okoineme, “One of the key issues on the table today is the limited resources available to government to undertake development initiatives and so most times when citizens advocate or draw intention to certain issues government always come to the table without argument around. There’s so much we can do around some of these things. But again is for us to be able to help government look into possibilities, are there local initiatives? Are there local processes that can be harnessed? Are there indigenous knowledge that can be harnessed? To deal with some of these challenges rather than looking at it from this very big perspective.”
While underscoring the impact of journalists in directing the attention of government to tax structure in providing the necessary pool for finances required to fund areas like malnutrition, he said journalists must show understanding to basic budget issues.
“Journalists also are from several outlets and they represent certain political interests than economic interests but again it’s so much around balance reportage where you are able to bring the human angle to whatever story you want to put all out there and getting the voice and attention of the people.
“Journalists have a responsibility to go out there, seek alternative routes to telling the story of the people that government should listen to. These things are not easy, we know that as civil society and the media development agencies are trying to see how they can increasingly build the capacity of journalists but we know these things are not easy so let’s begin to see Journalist build more relationship with communities, and non state actors so that they can together build the kind of engagement that virtually reinforces each other in terms of helping to propose solution to the challenges in the society and in this case malnutrition.
“There are possibilities and these possibilities are our ability to put out the realities out there. The realities of people suffering from this, the realities of what is possible with government policies, the realities of local knowledge and local resources. So these for me are the things that we should begin to focus our attention on,” he added.
On her part, Executive Director, International Society of Media in Public Health, Mrs Moji Makanjuola, who addressed participants through a recorded message said workshop will enable journalists to understand better and dig deeper into knowing why we have continued as a people to neglect the most vulnerable amongst us, Children, voiceless and the people we depend on as the future leader of the country.
“We know that in recent times, the budget allocation for nutrition has suffered particularly at the Federal level, where we understand that the whole budget has been taken off and is at the zero levels.
” Well, this is very sad, but then again, we as the ear, eye and voice of the vulnerable and especially children, we need to speak up to this and it is time that we know how, where, the process and the utilization of budget allocation are made, and why nutrition still suffers some blows” she stated.
