As government at all levels rakes in more money from the fuel subsidy removal policy, the Daily Trust Foundation (DTF) has urged journalists to intensify tracking of government budgets.

DTF, which is a corporate social responsibility organisation of the Media Trust, publishers of Daily Trust Newspapers, made the call during its three-day Investigation and Data Journalism training organised for North-East journalists in Gombe, and supported by MacArthur Foundation.

Chairman of the foundation, Bilya Bala, tasked the media to stand with the masses in the face of the prevailing economic challenges in the land.

His words: “The media must be firm in accountability, transparency and investigative reports. The people have so much confidence in the media, they count on you, and we should not let them down. We have been training media practitioners across the country and giving scholarships to indigent students with outstanding performance in different universities.”

A scholar with City University of London, Dr Abdullahi Tasiu Abubakar, in his paper, “Accountability Journalism at Subnational Level,” stated that a chunk of corruption occurs at sub-national levels that are unreported, while more attention is paid to the national level.

He said: “If we can pay attention to accountability journalism at the grassroots, hold our leaders to account, most of our problems of banditry, insurgency and others will reduce because development will spring and employment rate will go up.”

Also, the Data Editor at BBC Africa, Damilola Ojetunde, spoke on data mining, extraction and analysis.

The award-winning investigative journalist charged journalists to prioritise data usage to validate their reports, stating that international best practices have shifted to data-driven stories.

According to him, there are millions of ways journalists could mine data, charging the practitioners to acquire the skill of using reliable data.

Ojetunde charged journalists at sub-national levels to hold the government more accountable, as revenue collections have increased by a reasonable percentage.