By Wandoo Sombo and Ebere Agozie
The Administrator of the National Judicial Institute (NJI), Justice Salisu Abdullahi has advised journalists covering the judiciary to always approach court registrars for court records whenever they are in doubt about any proceeding.
Justice Abdullahi who gave the advice on Tuesday in Abuja at the close of a two-day capacity building workshop for judiciary correspondents said that journalists had the right to see the records of the court.
“My simple advice to my brothers and sisters here is that whenever you are in court, there is proceedings and you don’t seem to understand, sometimes because you may not be trained as lawyers, you may have that problem which is okay.
“The best thing, please approach the registrar, you have every right t see the records or even ask for it so please try to do that so there may not be mistake here and there in the reportage so please try to do that and I assure you of the cooperation of the NJI,’’ he said.
He said that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the calendar of the institute resulting to its inability to hold the workshop in 2021.
He, however, maintained that now that the pandemic had been surmounted, the institute would improve on its organization of the workshop and make it better.
Earlier, presenting a paper titled;’’ The Concept and Role of Emotional Intelligence as a Tool in Media Relations’’ Amb. Victor Ojaide, Vice President, Continuing Professional Development asserted that the media was a major pillar of justice.
According to Ojaide, if you remove the media, there will be a critical defect and with time, the entire structure and society will collapse into corruption and then into anarchy.
He, however, said that the absence of fair and balanced reportage was tantamount to silence adding applying emotional intelligence in reportage would engender positive change in society.
“High emotional intelligence as a tool in media relations can affect society in the following ways: it will inform of facts and truths, it will motivate to ideas, it will persuade for change and it will inspire to transform. If your perception to reportage does not promote this, please check it.’’
The News Agency of Nigeria, (NAN) reports that the workshop which is the seventh in its series is organised by the institute annually to build the capacity of journalists on the judiciary beat.
NAN also reports that the theme for the 2022 edition is: “Towards Fair and Balanced Reportage of Judicial Proceedings in Nigeria’’. (NAN)
