HOLDING LEADERS TO CAMPAIGN PROMISES: Stakeholders tasks Media to monitor President Tinubu’s Campaign Promises.. FG committed to fulfilling promises- Ayo Oyalowo

.. IOS/Web App will give journalists, researchers, others digital access to the media election code- IPC

Oru Leonard 

International Press Centre (IPC), on Tuesday gathered Journalists and Media to unveil the compilation of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s campaign promises to ease tracking his promises he made during the 2023 general election now that he has been sworn as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

In his remarks, the Executive Director, International Press Centre (IPC),  Lanre Arogundade said documentation of the promises, which cuts across several development indicators, were part of the benchmarks of IPC’s media monitoring on the coverage of the 2023 electoral processes across ten national print and ten online news mediums.

“The gathering is important because the fulfillment of campaign promises is at the core of democratic accountability. During the campaigns, we documented the campaign promises of all the presidential candidates which is normally our tradition to publish that of the President so that we can look at his promises in our respective beats, maybe in the area of sports, health education, whichever appeals to us and we can then begin to look at how they are implemented.

“These days, we talk of solution-driven journalism, but you can’t have solutions when you don’t pick promises, follow them up and ensure that they are actually implemented. We also need to ask questions if there are challenges to implementation or if there are changes to that plan. That is what we call democratic accountability.

“We would have been happy if we were able to document the campaign promises of all elected governors as well. This is one of the challenges that we’re throwing at our colleagues, anybody can do this”, Lanre said.

He further said that IPC has been supporting the media for more than a decade for the purpose of professionalism in the coverage of the democratic processes and elections,  as the event would lead to the development of collaborative strategies for greater impact.

Dr. Otive Igbuzor, Executive Director of African Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development (Centre LSD), presented a paper titled “Beyond The Rhetoric Of Campaigns: The Role of Citizens and The Media In Ensuring Democratic Accountability”, noted that politicians all over the world make grand political statements and sweeping promises during campaigns which are difficult to implement while in government.

He said accountability places a responsibility on the government to acquire the necessary ability to perform, the obligation to provide information, explanations and/or justifications and the necessity to absorb the consequences of unaccountable actions including disciplinary measures.

He enumerated some tools which can be used to hold the government to account as follows; Parliamentary oversight, citizens oversight/accountability, social audits, budget analysis, report cards and independent commission.

The representative of the Federal Government of Nigeria, who also was among the campaign of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, HOLDING LEADERS TO CAMPAIGN PROMISES: Stakeholders tasks Media to monitor President Tinubu’s Campaign Promises.. FG committed to fulfilling promises- Ayo Oyalowo assured Nigerians that that the President will fulfill all his promises, adding that he has started implementing some.

Earlier, IPC’s Press freedom officer and project Officer EU-SDGN II, Melody Akinjiyanin during her opening remarks said in line with its mandate of strengthening the role of the media in democratic governance, IPC has always monitored the campaign promises of presidential candidates during general elections and then published that of the winner for necessary follow-up, since 2011.

Akinjiyan disclosed that the roundtable was an avenue to further discuss the ground-breaking achievements made by the IPC in recently developing the Nigerian Media Code of Election Coverage for IOS and creating the Media Election App.

She added that the development of the IOS/Web App will give journalists and other media professionals, researchers, academia, students of journalism and mass communication, etc, digital access to the media election code.

The meeting was facilitated by the International Press Centre (IPC), Lagos-Nigeria implementing partner with the Institute for Media and Society (IMS) within component 4 (Support to media) of the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria-Phase II (EUSDGN II) project.