By Adewumi Ademiju, Ado Ekiti
Media practitioners and Civil Society Organizations have been urged to focus on service delivery and implementation of policy decision through adequate reportage.
The appeal was made at a media engagement recently organized by Partnership to Engage Reform and Learn (PERL).
PERL works in all the six states of the South West region.
The media engagement according to PERL Is a meeting to influencing policy decision and improving service delivery in the south west region.
The programme which was the last governance programme of PERL in Nigeria was held at Owu Crown Hotel, Km 2 Monatan, Ibadan, Oyo State.
Participants at the events were journalists from South West drawn from print, broadcast and social media, as well as representative from Civil Society Organizations (CSO), Development Agenda for Western Nigeria, (Dawn), Justice Development And Peace Commission ( JDPC).
The objective of the programme is to ‘amplify the voice of citizen at influencing policy and promote good governance.
‘Critical issues bothering service delivery and development were discussed. The participants were engaged on how to create linkages between civil societies and media for service delivery especially in the South West region.
The media which has been described as having ‘a power of believability’ was charged to stimulate people into positive action, served as whistle blower, and mount pressure to improve the service of people.
The participants who identified service delivery as citizens’ voice and satisfaction adopted certain steps to improve service delivery. The steps are –improve the lives of the citizen in the respective work place, giving adequate information to people, identify challenges facing people, proffer solutions to the challenges, stakeholders awareness through reportage, constant report on the issue to mount pressure for solution.
