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From Tony Osauzo, Benin
Journalists and the media in general have been charged to adequately report the three thematic areas of the Human Capital Development Programme, a project of the National Economic Council (NEC), to enable beneficiaries understand the benefits that are inherent in the programme.
The Core Working Groups of the HCD are working on three thematic areas of health and nutrition, education and labour force participation.
The Regional Consultant of the programme for South South, Mr OluSoji Adeniyi, gave the charge at a two-day Media engagement and HCD reporting for media agencies held Benin.
Speaking on the topic, “Accelerating HCD base in Nigeria”, Adeniyi said the three thematic areas of the programme were poorly reported, pointing out that stakeholders and communities were not aware of the benefit of the programme.
He, therefore, enjoined the media to say more about what government was doing through the HCD to enable communities become aware of the benefit of education and other thematic areas of the programme.
“The training is to build the capacity of media agencies and also to introduce the components of HCD to journalists to avoid misconception.
“The essence of the workshop is to let you know that HCD is a life cycle of a child effect which begins from the womb, the health of the mother, breastfeeding, nurturing of the child and the educational status of that child.
“It involves the opportunity for the child to become employable through the skills that they would have gotten.
“During the period, they were exposed to adolescency to young adults who would contribute to the labour force of the country.
“So the media need to engage the communities to let them know that a child that is wondering around during school hours, is a child that is likely to drop out of school and need to be corrected and taken back to school.
“We want people to understand that a child that is going to be fully developed to contribute to the economy of the nation starts from when the child is in the mother’s womb till the child is given birth to in a facility that has the right kind of birth attendant so that we do not loose the child and mother to infant and maternal mortality,” he said.
Using Edo State as reference, Adeniyi noted that bronze casting has become obsolete but urged the media to educate the people on the need to revive it because it has put Edo on the world map.
Besides, he called on the various focal persons of HCD and other information managers to see journalists as progressive partners, adding that keeping information about HCD and other government projects away from them amounted to doing more harm than good.
The HCD South South Regional Consultant disclosed that a total of 260 journalists have so far been trained for the programme in the region.
In her speech, the Edo HCD Focal Person and Managing Director, Edo Skills Development Agency, (Edojobs), Mrs Violet Obiokoro, disclosed that governor Godwin Obaseki had invested in HCD and was working with the three thematic areas of health and nutrition, education and labour force, but lamented that all of the improvement recorded so far by the governor in the state in the thematic areas have been under reported.
“The governor has done a lot in these areas but they are under reported and as a result, people are not aware of what government is doing,” Obiokoro said and appealed to journalists and the media “to begin to look into these areas and help us report what government is doing.
“it is about time we begin to report these activities and collect data by ourselves instead of waiting for people to report and collect data for us”, she further pleaded.
The training climaxed with a panel discussion of Focal Persons from the ministry of Health, Education and Edojobs on the impact of HCD thematic areas in the state..
