Mrs Lola Adekanye, Country Director, Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and Mrs Margaret Olele, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) American Business Council (ABC) at a news briefing on the National Agenda for Democracy Strengthening (NADS) in Lagos
Private Sector Development for Democracy Forum (PSDdF) has underscored the role of the media in amplifying the ideals of the National Agenda for Democratic Strengthening (NADS).
It made the call on Wednesday in Lagos at a news briefing.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the PSDdF is a coalition of organisations aimed at perfecting the country’s democratic systems and strengthening institutions to drive economic sustainability.
Mrs Lola Adekanye, Country Director, Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), said the media could lend its voice to driving some of NADS policies.
She noted that some of the ideals and guideposts of NADS included judicial independence, trustworthy electoral systems, promotion of free media amongst others.
“It is important to have an ethical journalism practices, the implementation of strong regulations to support independent media, free media operation without influence and others.
“The role of professional journalism and media backed by code of ethics cannot be overruled.
“It is also very important for journalists to take responsibility and meet up with their obligations of preserving our democracy,” she said.
The CIPE director also emphasised the need for consequence management as a critical part of democracy hinged on the rule of law to prevent governance from creating more apathy among the youths.
She noted that while no democracy could survive without trustworthy electoral systems, upon impunity, people had to be punished as stipulated by law.
Adekanye said citizens must take ownership of the governance and democratic systems that they wanted to see by meeting up with their civic obligations such as voting, paying taxes among others.
She said Nigeria must begin localising its civic education, particularly in rural areas, by developing its civic education curriculum at a much lower level to catch the youth young on their responsibilities as citizens.
“With the current administration’s effort to get local governments to be more proactive and more involved in managing their financial affairs, this is the better time to really localising civic education seriously.
“It affords us the opportunity to engage marginalised communities,” she said.
She stated that another priority area the NADS sought to address was the land tenure reform.
She said as much as citizens chose to trust government, there must be a device for mitigating the abuse of power by those who you cede all your power to govern your collective shared resources.
“That is why land claims became a very important part of the National Agenda for Democracy Strengthening.
“First of all, we must address basic things like harmonising land laws as we cannot have different in one state and in another have different land laws prevailing, customary law or regular law.
“The other part is really just to digitise the land system, clean up the mess and combat corruption in land administration,” she said.
Mrs Margaret Olele, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), American Business Council (ABC), said the media, private sector players, citizens and leaders must in their different roles find a way to strengthen the country’s democracy.
She said a sound knowledge of the issues surrounding press freedom and other ideals of the NADS would enable stakeholders be more proactive about strengthening institutions. NAN
