Nigerian editors to meet on state of economy in Nov

The Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) has said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is expected to declare open the 19th annual conference of the guild slated for November 14 to 18 in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.

The NGE President, Eze Anaba, and the General Secretary, Dr Iyobosa Uwugiaren, in a statement on Sunday, said the gathering would involve economic masters and technocrats from global and local institutions to interrogate the state of Nigeria’s economy, missing gaps, and the role of the media executives/editors in resolving the challenges.

The conference expected to be attended by over 400 media executives and senior editors would be chaired by the Founder/Chairman of Vanguard Newspapers Group, Uncle Sam Amuka.

The umbrella body of editors/media executives in Nigeria, said this year’s conference, which will also witness the launch of the NGE Editors Trust Fund was carefully planned to interrogate the state of the nation’s economy and the missing gaps, with a theme, “Stimulating Economic Growth, Technological Advancement: Role of the Media”.

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“The conference will also examine the Nigerian media sustainability and the existential threat by Big Tech, and what we need to do to arrest it. The goal of the conference is to remind editors and media executives that economic actors need accurate, credible and timely information to allocate resources judiciously. That foreign/local investors and other groups in the economic ecosystem, demand a governance-monitoring role from the media,” the statement said.

Giving a background to the conference, the guild said that the media have a role to play in fixing the economic challenges in Nigeria and that chief executive officers from both public and private sectors believed the media could provide information and monitoring role to the economic policy development process that will lead to more effective economic policies and programmes.

It said, “There is an ongoing conversation among economic experts, which suggests that unlike in the past, high oil prices have failed to enhance the performance of our economy since 2021. Rather, what we have consistently witnessed is a ‘macroeconomic stability that has been weakened, – in the midst of declining oil production.

‘’There is also a concern over a costly petrol subsidy that was consuming a large share of the nation’s gross oil revenues until it was removed recently by the federal government; exchange rate racketeering and distortions; monetization of the fiscal deficit, and high inflation -hitting about 27.08%.

‘’The fast worsening economic environment is leaving millions of Nigerians in poverty. Many experts and global institutions have argued that with our nation’s population growth continuing to outpace poverty reduction, the number of Nigerians living below the national poverty line will move up by 15 million before 2025.”

The guild added that while some people might argue that Nigeria had made some progress in socio-economic terms in recent years, the country was recently ranked very low in global human capital development.