The Speaker of the House of Representatives Rt. Hon Abbas Tajudeen, Ph.D, has called for more trade and technological relationships between Nigeria and the Republic of South Korea.
Deputy speaker, Kalu, emphasised that the recovery of funds forfeited and abandoned in financial institutions and government agencies will rejuvenate Nigeria’s economy amidst ongoing economic trials.
The sexualisation of children is more rampant than ever before. In this report, by Ejiro Umukoro, a follow-up to her Pulitzer Centre Outbreak series, we trace back how the lockdown of 2020 recorded a spike in the surge of grooming and sexualisation of children.
While April 11 is marked every year as the day to protect the child, in 2023 however, child porn, sexual grooming and sexualisation of children continues to persist. This investigatve report uncovers the root causes, triggers, enabling factors and solutions to meeting the deadline for the prevention and stoppage of child abuses of all forms as mandated by the UNDP SDG goals on gender equality, peace, justice, and strong institutions.
The killings, coming 24 hours after the collapsed mosques with over 12 persons affected, raises security concerns that must be addressed with immediate effect.
As the world marks International Youth Day, Nigeria is among the top three countries with the highest number of yourhful population. Speaker Abbas, of the House of Representatives on this occasion, highlights the need to create enabling environments that will tap into over 70 million youth in Nigeria for a richer block of wealth through skills and talent development to close the job gaps.
Editorial Thrust by Lady Ejiro Umukoro.
As audiences evolve and adapt to what, why, and how they consume news, this raises the bar for journalists on the need to adopt a new style of reportage: constructive journalism. Research shows people want fresh social stories. Not only gloom and doom.
As such, the lingering emotions a reader should have after reading a news article or investigative report should not be pity. They are not victims but people with complicated lives.
This therefore requires that journalists amd media owners constantly seek stories about hero’s, survival, a vigilante who came to the rescue, what state authorities are doing to prevent reoccurrence, survival mechanism adopted, how they are rehabilitating themselves, and much more. Readers want to consume stories like these, too.*
GENDER ANGLE:
While 92% of men and 8% of women are reported on by journalists and the media, yet more than 40% of those affected as victims, persons displaced, etc., are women.
This implies there aren’t a lot of women reporting on conflicts as it is often seen, assumed, or considered not safe and easy for women. Editors, thus, influence how voices of women are reported by when they prevent female journalists from covering these. Conservatism in the newsroom is now a barrier on open mindedness that needs to be removed.
It has now become imperative, therefore, that the media and journalists alike must become deliberate and intentional in including women voices in report for equal representation.
Did you know there are an estimated 258 million widows around the world, and nearly one in ten live in extreme poverty.
While many cultures force women to become tagged and identify with widowhood as a state of mind, at LightRay Media, we are deliberately choosing to retell and change this narrative in this report by giving the insights and background that has led many women to mistakenly assume widowhood as an identity, which it is not.
A widower, a man, is not seen to be identified with that tag. Men understand that it is simply a phase, an incident that does not have the power to hold them down. Women who lost their partners are encouraged to tap into their inner worthiness and confidence to rise above the incident and not become the incident.
In November 2023, the African Women in Media will be hosting its 2023 Conference in Kigali, Rwanda. The Ignite Speaker for that Conference, Ejiro Umukoro, will be presenting a paper titled: Challenging the Narratives Around Gender-Based Storytelling in the light of her Pulitzer Centre Recognised Investigative Journalism series where she used statistics, data visualisation and insights to retell gender focused stories like never before done in any Nigeria News publication prior to Covid-19 pandemic. She reports on a pandemic within a pandemic, revealing stories, datasets and more that inspired a call to action both by the citizens as well as the legislative passage of the VAPP Bill into an Act (Violence Against Person Prohibition Act) by the Delta State Government.
Her Ignite Keynote Talk on how to retell gender stories intends to redefine how the media needs to review and ethically tell gender-based stories as they are without detracting from the real value of stories to create desired impact.
For Azeezat Olaoluwa, being assertive and intentional is a skillset every woman who wants to succeed in the media space has to cultivate and develop. Her commitment to a craft she never considered as a career option speaks more about how hidden gifts can be elusive to those who possesses it, yet go on to make a lot of difference.
In this Exclusive Interview with us at LightRay Media on the Nigeria Women in Media Project Series, she shows us how important in every professional move one makes, it has to contribute to one’s big overall career picture. She believes in not waiting for anyone to tell your story. So, sit back and enjoy this cruise as Azeezat Olaoluwa, a Seniour Journalist with the BBC News in West Africa, who tells original content for tv, radio and digital, narrates her own unique media journey.