Yobe State Commissioner of Information, Abdullahi Bego, has said the state governor, Mai Mala Buni, is poised to reposition the state’s information sector in order to ensure that the people of the state are kept abreast of developments in the state.
Bego, however, said the government, through the Ministry, will engage with the people “in an honest and respectful way so that the bond of trust between the government and the people is rebuilt and strengthened”.
Bego was speaking when he assumed office as commissioner of information in the state, on Tuesday.
The Commissioner observed that the state’s information sector has to catch up with the evolving and rapidly changing media landscape for it to make progress.
“The global mediascape, that is the landscape in which the media operates – the physical and virtual spaces, mindsets, technologies, equipment etc. – has continued to evolve. To stay relevant and justify our existence, we are going to have to constrantly evolve too.
“Right now we have so much work to do for our State TV and Radio services and the State Printing Corporation – organisations that are currently largely living in the past, with technologies and equipment that seem from antiquity. This is more true, of course, for YTV and the printing press”, he said.
The Commissioner said he will make effort to train and retrain workers in the sector to make them more effective in their work of disseminating information. “We will train and re-train information sector personnel – from basic news writing skills and basic grammar and style tips to how they can create rich media contents that could draw, engage, and retain large media audiences”, he said.
Bego also spoke about the need to make proper use of social media in the state and train young people who use social media a lot to understand and avoid fake news, misinformation and disinformation.
“Let’s work to tap from the endowments of new media and fend off the ills and threats of fake news, misinformation and disinformation”, he said.
The Commissioner also said that part of the training to be offered to Yobe’s information sector personnel will focus on how they approach news writing in a way that shows the government cares for what people go through in their daily lives.
“Many people across our state and across the country are hurting from the current inflationary trends in the economy and the effects of fuel subsidy removal. Times are tough for many people in our state. As media practitioners, as information sector personnel, how do we appropriately convey and reflect people’s feelings and the concerns and action of government for those feelings?”, he said.
