Journalists tasked on rapid urbanisation of Abuja

Journalists in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) have been tasked on the need to track challenges of rapid urbanisation in the area.

The issues were raised during training on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and developing a Network of Sustainable Development Journalists organised by the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) in partnership with Media Awareness and Information for All Network (MAIN), yesterday, in Abuja.

At the event, over 50 journalists in the FCT, drawn from over 30 media houses, shared experiences on economic, social and environmental reportages with a view to identifying underlying and core issues in need of attention, especially in relation to the SDGs.

The two-day programme, which ends today, has Dr. Jide Jimoh, a member of The Guardian Editorial Board, as one of the facilitators.

Another facilitator, Prof. Lai Oso, exposed participants to the economic, environmental and social issues of reporting from the lens of sustainability.

National Information Officer, United Nations Information Centre (UNIC), Oluseyi Soremekun, said Sustainability Journalism is located at the juncture of environmental journalism (reporting about climate change, loss of biodiversity, acidification of the world’s oceans etc.), social journalism (reporting about peace, security, justice, poverty, human rights, political participation, democracy, equality etc.), and economic journalism (issues related to the economy and the financial sector, business, stock market etc.).

“This is beyond merely reporting about the SDGs,” he said.

According to the NBS, the territory accounted for the third-highest volume of mineral production in Nigeria in 2017, with an output of 4.46m tonnes, or 9.75% of total production. Of this total, the territory produced 3.52m tonnes of granite, 721,000 tonnes of granite dust, 204,000 tonnes of laterite, 16,700 tonnes of clay, 2970 tonnes of limestone, 250 tonnes of tin ore and smaller quantities of lead and zinc. Good road network and ICT infrastructure

GDP of the territory grew at an average of 11% between 2009 and 2014 while at the national level, GDP grew at 6.7% during the same period. While growth fell dramatically after 2014, it has since recovered, rising to 3% in 2017 and predicted to grow by 4% past 2018.

This performance exceeds that on the national level which grew by 0.8 percent in 2017 and is projected to grow by 1.9% in 2018.

The SDG17 focus of the training also works in hand with SGD4 and SDG11 which targets Quality Education and Sustainable Cities and Communities, respectively.