Coronavirus: Nigerians Can Overcome The Disease With Accurate Reports By Traditional And Social Media

Giving the charge on Sunday in an interactive session with some select newsmen  in Minna, Niger State capital, was a Veteran Joutnalist and Development  Communications Expert, Mr. Onche Bishop Odey, saying, “the Media must be concerned about the risks involved and it must be able to effectively communicate the interventions to the people”.

He stated further that the Media must be able to effectively educate the people on what to do,  while also giving feedback  to the government about the progress bring made toward controlling it, adding that the greater measure of all interventions as it relates to health and other issues were better fought in the Media.

Odey, a former Editor, with the Daily Independent Newspapers, recalled noted that when the Ebola crisis occurred around 2014, that the Media was at the fore front of disseminating information to the citizenry on the efforts being made by the government and all the stakeholders to fight the pandemic disease, stressing that the without the collaborations between the government and the Media at the time, that the country would not have survived it.

” But it was fought hands down  because the Media was up and doing and it was also very active. So, with every development, there was a reportage in the Media. And as at that time, social media was not this active in Nigeria.

“So, with the combinations of what the social media has come  out to be and we felt that with both the traditional media, they will be up to their tasks of giving out the report as to what to do and what not to do, including the steps to follow by all concerned, beginning from the citizens to the policymakers on how to tame this corona virus pandemic”, he maintained.