… Declares Open 46th National
Council on Information Meeting
AS Nigeria’s managers of information led by the Minister of
Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed converged on Asaba to brainstorm on the way
forward for the country, Delta State Governor, Senator Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa has
challenged them to go beyond information dissemination, to embrace the more
strategic function of communication.
According to Governor Okowa, “as information managers, your
first responsibility is to ensure that information fed to the public is
complete, accurate, relevant and understandable; you must become more
scientific in your approach and go beyond the realm of information
dissemination, to embrace the more strategic function of communication.
Declaring open the 46th meeting of the National Council on
Information Friday in Asaba, Governor Okowa reiterated,
“communication involves speaking and listening; it prioritises research and
action before speaking, and demands constant evaluation of our information
management strategies.”
While acknowledging that information is the live wire of any
organization, whether public or private, the governor said, “I believe the
Ministries of Information should serve as sensors of stakeholder and public
opinion on and about the policies, programmes and performance of the government
through periodic perception audits.”
“The intelligence gathered is very useful in ascertaining the
impact and acceptability of government policies and programmes, as well as
helping to gauge the public mood, and their perception of the government or
governor,” the governor said.
Senator Okowa called for the deployment of valuable assets to
the management of information, disclosing, “when governments suffer from
credibility crisis, the problem is often traceable to improper, inadequate and
inefficient information management that creates a chasm and fuels distrust
between the governed and the leaders.”
“In theory, the Ministry of Information is the officially
designated organ of managing and disseminating government information; it is
supposed to be the clearing house for all government information, but, we have
seen situations where heads of other ministries and political appointees made
public pronouncements that contradicted the official government policy leading
to confusion in the minds of the public and loss of confidence in government’s
information machinery,” Governor Okowa emphasised at the occasion which he also
used to call for proper articulation of “vision for government information
management that is clear, concise and measurable.”
Minister of Information in a keynote address, called for the
training and re-training of media managers to meet with the challenges of
information management, especially in respect to the new media in the 21st
century digital world.
“Cashing in on the still evolving new information and digital
technology will undoubtedly facilitate our work. The multiplicity, immediacy
and pervasiveness of the platforms of information dissemination mean that we
can reach more people much faster. In other words, the democratization of the
technology of information dissemination has posed new challenges to us.” he
said, adding, “today, anyone can wake up this morning and decide to become an
online newspaper publisher, an online television station owner, an online radio
station operator, a purveyor of news, photographs and videos using the numerous
Social Media platforms like Facebook, Whatsapp, Skype, Twitter, Instagram and
imo, just to mention a few. They spread whatever information that catches their
fancy without engaging in the rigours of accuracy, fact-checking and fairness
imposed by the traditional media. But there is another problem: They have their
own public, and this public believes whatever information they put out!, the
irony is that even your friends and family believe them more than you; we need to
train and re-train our media personnel to be able to meet the huge challenges
of media management.”
He continued, “media managers must up our game by keying into
the new information and digital technology through training and re-training of
our personnel, acquisition of state-of-the art technology as well as deploying
uncommon commitment and passion to what we do. information managers have to be
at the forefront of reshaping our country to the time-tested values of old;”
Earlier, the Managers of Information led by the Minister of
Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed also paid a courtesy visit on Governor Okowa
in Government House, Asaba.
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