NAN-H-128
Support
By Sumaila Ogbaje/Racheal Abujah
Abuja, Jan. 24, 2017 (NAN) Mr Olusegun Odebunmi, the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics and Values, says the committee is prepared to support the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) to achieve its mandate.
Odebunmi gave the assurance when he led the members of the committee on an oversight visit to the agency on Tuesday in Abuja.
He acknowledged that the major challenge confronting the agency was inadequate funding, pledging to ensure that adequate budgetary provisions were made for it.
The chairman assured that the committee would cooperate with the agency on its needs provided it furnishes the committee with the necessary information required for its activities.
He also urged the agency to furnish the committee with a detailed report of its 2016 budget implementation to guide it in taking decision on the passage of 2017 budget.
“I agree that there are a lot of challenges facing the agency as regards the funding of its budget.
“In as much as you know that you have a committee overseeing your activities, I don’t see anything wrong in carrying the committee along.
“We are together in serving this nation and I can assure you of the support of this committee provided you call for it..
“In as much as we are ready and you call for the support of the committee, we are ready to do our own part so that Nigerians can benefit from it,’’ he said.
Earlier, the Managing Director of NAN, Mr Bayo Onanuga, solicited for the support of the National Assembly to address the challenge of funding facing the agency.
Onanuga said that lack of money was the major challenge hindering the agency from carrying out its mandate efficiently and measuring up with its foreign counterparts.
He disclosed that the agency had been finding it difficult to achieve its mandate as well as carrying out some of its basic functions of providing news.
Onanuga also disclosed that the agency recently faced a difficult situation in maintaining its bureau offices outside the country as well as sending reporters to cover events outside the country.
“I want to use this opportunity to appeal to the members of this committee to get ready to support us because we are ready to be your partner.
“The greatest challenge for this agency is money; we have reporters that we want to send on assignments but we cannot send them because we don’t have money.
“In fact there is something that happened recently; the problem in The Gambia. We could not afford to send a reporter to The Gambia not to talk of a cameraman.
“It is the Air Force that carried our reporter and cameraman along with the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) crew to Senegal.
“It was so bad that we could not do such basic things. They are playing soccer in Gabon now, but NAN, the primary news agency, doesn’t have a single person there.
“We depend on Reuters, AFP and some other news sources and that should not be.
Onanuga, however, promised to furnish the committee with the detail s of its 2016 budget implementation, pledging to correct all mistakes in the agency’s practices. (NAN)
OYS/AIR/JPE/OJO
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(Edited by Joseph Edeh/Mufutau Ojo)