The National Human Rights Commission has recently trained a crop of journalists including yourself on a training on promoting reconciliation, reintergration and transitional justice in the states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. What can you say you benefited from the training?
I have benefitted immensely from the training on transitional justice programme organized by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) with support from its partners, European Union (EU) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and I thank the Commission for giving me such an opportunity to be part of it.
The training really shaped my professional edge in conflict and peace building reporting and editorial analysis. The training made me realize that my previous reports were largely hasty and poor in judgment because the North-East insurgency and the consequent humanitarian crisis is more complicated than I knew and thought.
The training helped me to understand some intricate factors sustaining the conflicts. There are also issues of sacrifices and controversial roles of the security agents, issues bordering on political will and most importantly, heart-breaking humanitarian issues. That includes the plight of internally displaced persons, especially women, children and aged. I now pay more attention to details, facts and different perspectives in editorial issues and stories on conflict to reflect the lessons learnt from the training on transitional justice. This means sending the right, objective, factual, non-sensational, un-provocative and peace-promoting messages in my reports.
I feel passionately involved as I focus more attention on highlighting the need for accepting responsibility and being accountable for the damages of the conflicts; need for mutual forgiveness; need for peace and how to sustain it, especially between victims of insurgency and repentant insurgents. I also emphasize on the urgent need to ensure that victims of conflict get justice and compensation because it is on this basis that mutual confidence and trust can be built between victims and perpetrators of conflicts in the spirit of genuine reconciliation and reintegration, which is the basis for transitional justice.
How do you intend to use your medium to assist the project?
Basically, it is in investigating, researching and writing reports in editorial issues and feature articles, which is what I have done a few times and I am determined to do more. Besides, transitional justice programme has been adopted as a major focus area of my new project called humanitarianvoice.com (Humanitarian Voice). It is an online news and magazine feature publication that spotlight activities of the humanitarian sector, which capture the pains, tears, agony, cheers, laughter and joy of our common humanity; report efforts of those whose contributions are making our world a better place. It also reports impacts of governance on citizens. In this wise, I will use the platform to also support the advocacy programmes of the transitional justice. We all need to get involved because we cannot really achieve any meaningful development and progress in the society without justice and peace.
To what extent do you think community members will believe in this project having enlightened them on it?
The task of achieving peace through reconciliation, rehabilitation and reintegration can be likened to war itself because it requires a lot of consistent sacrifices, pains, resources, resilience, endurance and commitment. That is why the role of the media is equally key in reporting and promoting the situations that can create positive perception, deconstruction of negative mindset, urging and challenging leaders and institutions to take the right policy action, as well as urging stakeholders to form a synergy. Of course, if the message and the approach are consistent, genuine and constructive, members of the communities will not only believe but they will embrace peace through the programme of transitional justice. This is very evident in the responses I got from the few internally displaced persons I interviewed at the IDP camp during the field trip. The respondents said they were equally tired of the conflicts because it has affected their means of livelihood and existence.
What other areas would you advise the Commission to focus on in achieving the goal of the project?
The Commission has done quite well, but I think it is also important to ensure that the message of peace anchored on transitional justice should be translated into local languages of the affected communities for broadcast and publication in local newspapers. Two, it is important to engage the security agencies in this all-important conversation. This is because there were issues that were raised pertaining to the roles of some security agencies but because the security agents were not factored into the programme, there was a vacuum. Besides, involving the security agents in the transitional justice programme can give the programme an edge because there are things we can learn from them, especially in their management of operation safe corridor that can bring out important issues on how their rehabilitation training programmes for repentant insurgents can enhance or adversely affect the effective implementation of transitional justice. Thirdly, there is a need for the Commission to carry along journalists on the transitional justice network during its community engagements activities on transitional justice. This can aid journalists get live important story leads for the purpose of clearer, detailed and strategic reportage towards a targeted objective.
Have you reported any similar organizations with the same vision?
No.
What challenges are you envisaging in carrying out your task as a journalist in this project?
One of the major challenges is the cost implication of investigating stories in terms of logistics. My media organization is not buoyant enough to invest sufficient fund in a very sensitive investigation such as conflict reporting of this nature that could take days, crossing the hurdles of travelling to communities or IDP camps, arranging and meeting different people at different layers of investigations looking for facts, figures and respondents. In the absence of funding support, it can be challenging to get the best or desirable outcome. The other challenge is that some heads of agencies and partners relevant to one’s investigation can be very difficult to access for interviews. Lastly, I would like to see a legal framework guiding the operations or implementation of transitional justice. This is so crucial because without it, it may be difficult to properly educate communities and stakeholders on the legal, structural and institutional bases for the project. Or how is it different from a traditional system of justice?
