European Union (EU) has trained 35 journalists from Bayelsa, Delta and Rivers on a community-based approach to curbing criminality and violence in the Niger Delta region.
The training was through a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Search for Common Ground, (SFCG).
The country director of SFCG, Fatima Abubakar, who welcomed the participants at the five-day training programme in Warri, Delta State, said that the training is aimed at equipping journalists with relevant skills of reporting criminality, violence and conflict in the Niger Delta region.
Abubakar who was represented by head of office/programme, Mr Yacinthe Agbagadjan, said one of the objectives of the training is to build a strong partnership between media and the organisation.
He said, “We want to work with you as media actors to expand our programmes and if we must record success, the media is very key in the implementation of this project in the three states.
”The European Union is not on ground, but it is through you the media that we can be heard.”
Also, the information management coordinator of the NGO, Mr Sunny Dada, in an overview of the project, said that the 18-month project was being implemented by a consortium of partners.
Dada said the partners are Stakeholders Democracy Network (SDN), Academic Associates Peace Works (AAPW) and Foundation Partnership Initiative in the Niger-Delta (PIND), with the Search for Common Ground being the major partner.
On his part, a national media practitioner, Mr Temisan Etietsola, who took the participants in various lectures on
”My Identify, Defining Conflict and violence, the Visible and the Invisible Dynamics in Conflicts”, stressed the need for them to understand how identify could be used to transform conflict.
SFCG is an international conflict transformation NGO aimed to transform the way individuals, groups, governments and companies deal with conflict, away from adversarial approaches and towards collaborative solutions.