Devcoms Hosts Immersion Program for Journalists in Nigeria

Nov 10th, 2008 6:31 PM UTC
By Edith Jibunoh

From Thursday the 9th – Friday 10th October, ONE Award Winner Devcoms hosted an immersion program for journalists in Kaduna (northern Nigeria) on current maternal newborn and child health issues in Nigeria with the goal of building the skills necessary for journalists to report responsibly on MDG goals 4 and 5.

Northern Nigeria’s health statistics are a lot worse than the rest of the country, and making the news in the Nigerian press in the last week has been a call by members of civil society to Northern governors, for a scale up of their interventions in these States where the situation, especially in child and maternal health, has become dire. Policy makers have also called on federal government to declare a national emergency to tackle the problems of the north, especially the Almajiri (child beggars, many from koranic schools) phenomenon. The World Bank recently reported that northern Nigerian has the highest number of illiterate children in the world and the region also has the least percentage of educational enrollment and success rate in national examinations in the country. The fundamental differences between northern and southern Nigeria’s poverty situation are the levels of severity and magnitude, and many blame religion (Islam is the prominent religion in the north), culture and the feudal history of governance for the current circumstances.

Devcoms hosted the immersion program at an opportune time given the current socio-political debates and successful results should mean that the 15 participants are empowered to write informed stories based on the collection of evidence from the field, from the people living in the conditions of concern. Akin Jimoh, Devcoms Coordinator, hosted the program and brought several resource persons from: Ministry of Health; a Health professor from the Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria; a budget tracking specialist from Action AID; and the Head of the Acquire project which works on Fistula. I provided an overview of ONE’s work and explained how our organization continues to fight to make sure these issues remain on the front burner of international development debates.

The first day was spent learning about the child and maternal health issues plaguing the country – particularly northern Nigeria – and the government’s budgetary and implemented response (or lack thereof) to the problems. On the second day, the participants focused on learning strategies and tools for reporters to use in leveraging the media as a watchdog in saving women and children’s lives. Group exercises tested these skills and participants developed action plans for their story development. Every journalist was assigned an individual mentoring plan with mentors who would be on hand to provide the journalist with assistance to support the development of their stories.

Akin Jimoh said in his opening remarks that the program was not about the ability of the journalists to report on the immersion program or what was learned there, but was in fact about the actual stories that were developed, based on evidence collected by them from their own investigations. The power of the media was clearly explained and a wealth of information provided, now we must wait for the stories which will influence change.

Health in Northern Nigeria

• 2007 budget on health for Nigeria was about 5% of total government expenditure (including recurrent expenditures)

• Nigeria has had an outbreak of nearly 190 cases of polio this year already, mostly in northern Nigeria. The number is a stark contrast to the 16 new cases in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the three other polio endemic countries.

• Northern culture of earlier marriage results in a missed opportunity for education, especially among girls. The lack of education is a major factor in the poor child and maternal mortality rate. 50,000 maternal deaths a year with the north making up 70% of these numbers.

-Edith Jibunoh

TAGS: ONE, ONE Award 2008, Policy News