National Wire About Nigerians, Nigerian Business and Other Stories
By Kate Abido
A Media training and research organisation, Media Career Development Network (MCDN) has commended the Management of Voice of Nigeria (VON) for taking the initiative to create a training department.
The Executive Director of MCDN, a media nongovernmental organisation, Mr. Lekan Otufodunrin however called on the Management to give the new department the needed support and properly fund it to help staff discharge their duties better.
Mr. Otufodunrin who was speaking during a courtesy visit to Voice of Nigeria, said that what VON has done is what people would want to emulate, so it should be done very well.
He said the courtesy visit to the Department was to see how his organisation would support the new VON Training department in the training and mentoring of its staff.
According to him, training and retraining was necessary in any organisation that wants to be relevant in the industry.
He encouraged VON to not only train but to mentor as according to him, mentoring helps mend the gap.
Recalling the Training School of the Daily Times Newspaper of old, he urged VON to fashion its training in that way, so that people who are interested in being in the industry can be trained to make it easy for them to flow in their work.
“And even if you have been working over a period of time, there is need to always go back and retrain. That is what we do and that is why we are here to pledge our support.
“There are people looking for where to be trained, the first thing is you must have a training department, you must make it available for inside and make it available for outside, either way, it works,” he said.
According to Otufodunrin, this was necessary because we are at a time when the media has almost changed, what we learnt years ago, is no longer what is operating, so we need to train a whole generation of media people and it should start in house that is the only way we can ensure that we can continue to be relevant, as training is one way to take our organisation to greater height.
The Executive Director said his organisation was open to partnership with VON and looks forward to a rewarding partnership.
Responding, the Director News, Mr. Austeen Elewodalu also lamented that paucity of funds had made Training Departments of organisations the first casualty, where trainings were always suspended.
“Regrettably, the Training Department is usually the first casualty when an organisation is broke, it is not supposed to be the case, it should be well funded to discharge its responsibilities as we need to be at par with our competitors.
The Director said that all departments in a broadcasting house needs to be trained and retrained for effectiveness or the whole work of the reporters would be messed up. He said it was for this and other reasons that VON was already retraining its staff through different in-house trainings.
He promised that VON would Partner with MCDN especially in the area of Mentorship.
Mr. Abdul-Warith Solanke, Acting Deputy Director of the Strategic Planning and Corporate Development also said that VON would be willing to partner with MCDN when it wants to train in Broadcasting as VON has experienced people in that area.
*Resource materials*
The NGO thereafter donated some of its publications and other resource materials to the VON Library which is under the training department.
The visiting team and VON Management team were led to the library by the Deputy Director Training, Ugonma Cokey.
She thanked Mr. Otufodunrin and his team, which was made up of Mr.Tunde Abatan, one of the directors and Miss Oyinlola Awonuga for the visit and the donation, as well as the Management staff of VON for their presence at the event.
Mrs. Cokey said that *”the training department was working towards upgrading the library, as well as an e- library with the help of partnerships and collaborations” so it can be a research and resource centre of choice for both VON and other media houses.*
Background
Media Career Development Network is a media NGO committed to training, mentoring and research in the country.
Mr. Lekan Otufodurin until last year when he voluntarily retired, was the Online Editor of the Nation Newspaper. He has worked in the media for more than three decades. He is a member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, President of Journalists For Christ, and Chairman of Education Committee of the Nigerian Union of Journalists, Lagos among others.
