By: Okosun Dennis
The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) in collaboration with Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) recently organised a one-day media interaction on the Protection of Civilian and Civilian Harm Mitigation in Armed Conflict at the Amber Residence, Lagos.
It was an amalgamation of reporters criss-crossing the Electronics, Print and Online platforms who deliberated and analysized issues, developments, trends and patterns of civilian exposure to harm with a cursory look at the inherent dangers journalists are exposed to when covering events, carrying out discreet investigations or reporting in war prone zones.
In his remarks, the Executive Director, CISLAC, Auwal Ibrahim Musa (Rafsanjani) observed that the work of civil society largely depends on the media as they cannot be everywhere. As such, the safety and security of the media is of great importance to the civil society.
He noted that it is only when journalists are safe that they would have an enabling environment to do their jobs, hence there must be perfect synergy with the media to be able to expose bad and corrupt leadership.
Musa reiterated that “it is not only government and security agencies that are harrassing journalists but there are some powerful individuals in the society that are doing worst harms to journalists. At CISLAC, ours is to ensure journalists are protected, not harassed to do their work.
“There are so much arms in the hands of non-state actors because of corruption. Some people are determined to terrorise the country.”
Musa, therefore, frowned at the daily killings, which has almost become part of our lives but was quick to emphasize that “something is wrong with our leaders, policy and law makers hence they have failed to do the needful because they have rented protection.
“The number of Journalists that have been killed because of doing their jobs is high. It’s like everything is normal but not normal. We need to intensify intelligence gathering which seems to be at its lowest ebb because before violence erupts in any community, there are some potential signs,” he enthused.
Given a critical analysis of trends and development as it affects civilians who are daily exposed to the vagaries of threats and danger, especially from the standpoint of the theme: “Media Interaction on Protection of Civilian and Civilian Harm Mitigation in Armed Conflict,” the Programme Manager, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Mr. Salaudeen Hashem, said that critical mass of the people in the country are very vulnerable as the country is losing so much human resources due to loose protection of civilians and potential investors.
Observing that one of the greatest setback to intelligence gathering remains the attitude of our security agencies, added that taking gratifications from civilians deepen people’s resentment against the security agencies not to volunteer information.
While decrying that there were no safe spaces in the community where civilians could run to while in danger or attacked, he added that constant killing is demarketing the party in power, the government and the economy.
There were presentation by the reporters on ‘Media and Information in Conflict Situation: Improving local broadcast capacity for protection.’e
