The Centre for Media and Society (CEMESO), under the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) Programme recently convened an in-situ technical action session in Ado-Ekiti, bringing together editors, producers, reporters, and media executives to catalyse editorial and operational commitments ahead of the June 20 Ekiti State Governorship Election.

Executive Director of CEMESO, Akin Akingbulu, said the training was a direct response to documented gaps uncovered during the organisation’s pre-assessment field engagement in the state.

To him, “we do not believe in one-off interventions. Journalism cannot be strengthened by a workshop that arrives once and disappears.”

Sustainable capacity is built through structured return — through accountability, through implementation, and through honest interrogation of whether commitments made in one session have been acted upon before the next begins.’

Akingbulu disclosed that the pre-assessment report had formally directed media practitioners and platforms to resist amplifying unverified information and to strengthen fact-checking mechanisms, particularly across digital channels, noting that the session was designed to catalyse precisely that embedding.

He cited specific safety incidents — including the arrest of journalist Omoniyi Feranmi for documenting vote trading and the targeting of activist-lawyer Dele Farotimi — as evidence that independent election coverage in Ekiti required deliberate institutional preparation, not optimism.

The Programme Manager, Timothy Bamidele, submitted that the session’s timing and specificity were both deliberate and urgent. With few weeks to the governorship election, Bamidele noted that the training placed direct responsibility on broadcast journalists to serve as the first point of interception against electoral misinformation.

He emphasised that WhatsApp, cited by 78 percent of focus group respondents as the primary source of election disinformation in Ekiti, remained entirely encrypted and unregulated, making the editorial decisions of individual journalists — particularly at the moment a voice note lands in a station’s inbox — the single most consequential line of defence available before the polls open.

The session formed part of the EU-SDGN Phase II media component, implemented by Centre for Media and Society (CEMESO), which targets six expected results including enhanced professionalism among media practitioners, strengthened capacity to counter electoral misinformation, improved civic and voter education coverage, and a stronger National Broadcasting Commission.