The Managing Director, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Malam Ali M. Ali, says the agency remains committed to factual reporting and sanctity of truth while delivering its mandate.
Ali stated this on Thursday when a delegation from the International Press Centre (IPC), led by its Executive Director, Lanre Arogundade, paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja.
He said the reforms, initiated by the agency, especially the publication of content in three portals of indigenous languages: Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba were yielding fruitful results.
The NAN chief said while that of the Hausa language portal has been running, the other two languages would soon take off.
He said indigenous communities would benefit from it.
Ali said: “We started with Hausa in January 2024, and we thought by now, after a timeline of six months, we have all three major languages, a separate portal, but due to some hiccups, we could not achieve others.
“We are engaging with natives to take news to them.
“This is in addition to partnering with a major telecom corporations to make news available to the rural dwellers if you subscribe.
“We are optimistic that with such engagement by centres like yours and organisations like Yiaga Africa and the rest, Nigerians will be better placed to make the choice and their choice will count.
“For us in NAN, we are committed to factual reporting and the sanctity of truth.
“In NAN, you find professionals and we are gender sensitivity in our operations.”
Ali recalled that when NAN was established, it had about 12 foreign offices, including UK, Russia, UN, South Africa, and Ivory Coast.
He added that due to paucity of funds, only the office in UN, New York is currently functioning.
According to him, the agency, with over 400 reporters, is working hard to boost its human capital base to further strengthen its operation and territorial dominance in news reporting across the country.
Ali said: “On pursuit of truth and authenticity, our stories are authentic, but the digital age has also given rise to its peculiar challenge, but NAN is in the forefront of fighting and hunting, gatekeeping, and fact-checking.
“We already have a fact-checking desk in the Agency.
“And we are also selling our exciting news products, especially in our multimedia.
“We have a virtual studio, a podcast station and an actual studio.
“Now, this means NAN has media convergence because you have text, audio, and audio-visual.”
Ali thanked IPC for considering the agency as its partner, expressing optimism for positive collaborations.
Arogundade said the centre is implementing a EU project called European Union Support for Democracy Governance in Nigeria.
He said: “We are implementing component four; support for media as a project.
“So, we have IPC on the one hand, and Center for Media and Society.
“And the totality of what we’re doing is to strengthen the capacity of the media to be able to cover elections actively, ethically and inclusively.
“Other issues we are looking at are women, young people, persons with disabilities and rural areas.
“And this is the overall objective of this action that we will battle upon for some time now.
“This is the second phase.
“The first phase was before the 2019 general election.
“And I must say that in that first phase towards this idea of extending media’s ethical and professional capacity to cover elections, we actually produced the Nigerian media co-report coverage.”
Arogundade further requested for collaboration with NAN on fact-checking and addressing fake news, stressing that when NAN gets it right, others will do the same.
