‘Investigative Journalism, Collective Investment For Better Society’

A former National President of the Nigeria Institute of
Public Relations (NIPR), Ama-Opusenibo Bobo Sofiri Brown, says journalism is a
collective investment to make society better.

Speaking as Chairman
at the launching of Late Minere Amakiri Foundation for Investigative Journalism
at the Ministry of Justice Conference Hall in Port Harcourt, last Thursday,
Bobo Brown said the event is a memorial that seeks to capture the essence of
Minere Amakiri’s style of journalism.

He noted late Minere Amakiri in his professional conduct
engaged the society credibly, to interrogate what should be the dorminanent
public morality in a post-war Nigeria that had to define its future.

According to him, Minere as a journalist chose to become
part of a movement to inject a sense of purpose into the constructive project
of shaping public morality and state policy in Nigeria.

In a lecture, Dr. Godwin B. Okon of Rivers State University
of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt, said truth is a shining path that
eliminates all doubt while creating room for liberation, integration and
development. He added that truth belongs to the knowledge industry, stressing
that the knowledge industry interestingly is the purview of mass media
operation.

On the of Freedom of Information Act, he said, it guarantees
the public and the press, the right to inspect records held by government,
agencies and other institutions of public concern.

He described the FOI Act as a thirty-two section statute
that empowers Nigerians with the tools to uncover facts, fight corruption and
hold officials and institutions accountable, stating that it serves as a
clarion call on public institutions to keep records of their activities,
operations and businesses with a view to making them available for public scrutiny.

He urged journalists to make sure they chart the course of
truth by proposing preventive reporting as every journalist is invariably a
trustee of the public.

Also speaking, Barrister Anyakwee Nsirimovu said journalism
is a reputable profession which the society should embrace and work
understandably with.

He challenged journalists to always pursue the truth using
the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act for the upliftment of society.