kogiflame.com
The Director General of Kogi State Bureau of Information Services and Grassroots Sensitisation, Mr. Abdulkarim Abdulmalik has called on government media aids in the state to be proactive in setting goals on their jobs rather than just wait for things to happen and be on the defensive.
“I want all of us to become agenda setters, we should stop being at the receiving end, we should stop being in the defensive”, he averred, while speaking at a media retreat organised for media aids of Local Government Administrators across the 21 Local Government Areas in the state.
Abdulmalik urged media aids to create their own programmes and remain busy at reporting government activities loud and wide enough to eliminate the chances of defending baseless accusations.
The information manager who commended Local Government Administrators in the state for their performance despite paucity of funds also said their media aids had done well in new media reportage; saying why it semmed they were not doing enough was because they never veered into the traditional media.
“On the aspect of reporting the government, many of you are doing wonderfully well, but why people are thinking that you are not doing enough is because you have not graduated into exploiting the opportunities in the conventional media. You are not heard on the radio, you are not read on the newspapers or the magazines.”
The Director General urged the aids not to limit their performance to the new media alone but also dominate the traditional media and give adequate coverage to government programmes as good ambassadors of the state at the grassroots.
He also encouraged aids who were non professionals to acquire prerequisite training to enhance their performance in accordance with the ethics of journalism and practise differently from other social platform users who were not trained.
To achieve this, he urged them to create synergy among themselves and with other media aids and organisations in the state, explaining that they would get the nitty gritty of journalism by so doing.
Earlier, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs in the state, Engr. Abubakar Ohere charged the media aids on doing more on reportage of State Government activities at the grassroots while also demanding their total loyalty to their employer.
The media aids described the retreat as enriching and called for adequate funding of the information department at the local government level.
