About 100 members of the Senate Press Corps (SPC) have converged in the historic town of Keffi, Nasarawa State, for their 2024 Annual Retreat.
The two-day retreat, which is themed ‘Democracy and Development: How Far, So Far, for Nigeria’, would be graced by guest speakers, who are policy-makers and development experts. They include the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio; Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Senator Yemi Adaramodu; other Senators, Clerk to the National Assembly (CNA), and Professor Shola Omotola, among other resource persons.
The parliamentary reporters, who arrived in Keffi from Abuja on Friday evening, were first treated to a Gala Night ahead of Saturday’s brainstorming sessions.
The Senate President will deliver a keynote address and thereafter will formally declare the retreat open this Saturday while goodwill messages will be delivered by other stakeholders.
Four paper presentations will be made by resource persons bordering on ‘Accessing development impacts of the executive arm of government on Nigeria’s democracy since 1999’; ‘National Assembly’s oversight powers and corruption in MDAs’; ‘Parliamentary Reporting and public perception of the National Assembly’, and ‘Challenges and future of the media in Parliamentary Reporting’.
Underscoring the essence of the gathering, the chairman of SPC, James Itodo, of FRCN, in his welcome address, said the retreat offers Nigerians at large an opportunity to appraise the workings of democracy on one hand while the parliamentary reporters are expected to acquire more knowledge on the other hand.
“If democracy in Nigeria after the appraisal, is seen not to have measured up to what it is meant for, then, at this gathering of eggheads as resource persons, required way out for better practice of democracy for the benefits of all and the society shall surely be proferred.
“For us as the society watchdogs particularly as reporters covering the National Assembly, our role in making the legislators more responsive to the citizenry shall also be examined for better performance.
“To my dear colleagues, this is an important programme for us to improve our knowledge and be better equipped, in joining other stakeholders to move our dear country forward by listening attentively to various presentations to be made so as to get the required ‘take-homes’ from them,” Itodo said.
According to the Retreat Planning Committee headed by the secretary of the SPC, Taiye Odewale of Blueprint Newspaper, a communique will be issued after the two-day event.