The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC), Mr. Bello Hassan, has charged the media to ensure accurate and factual coverage of the banking industry, especially in terms of reporting perceived impact and threats to depositors’ funds and the activities of financial system supervisors like the corporation.
The corporation’s Director, Communication & Public Affairs Department, Mallam Bashir Nuhu, in a statement quoted the NDIC boss as giving the charge when he hosted a delegation of the executive members of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), led by the Guild’s President, Mr. Mustapha Isah, during the team’s courtesy visit to the corporation’s headquarters in Abuja.
While commending the media for their cooperation in enhancing public awareness about the activities of the Corporation, Hassan expressed concerns about the instances of inaccuracies and misinformation observed in some media reports by less professional media practitioners that needed to be addressed.
The deposit insurance expert told the members of the Guild that it was in recognition of the media’s critical role in promoting public awareness that the corporation continued to implement initiatives for sustained interactions with media practitioners from time to time as it deemed appropriate over the years.
He listed such programmes as including the annual ‘NDIC Editors’ Forum’ for Publishers and Media Executives and ‘the Finance Correspondents Association of Nigeria (FICAN) Workshop’ for Business Editors and Finance Correspondents.
Hassan He explained that these initiatives were aimed at capacity building and providing updates on the current activities of the Corporation to deepen the knowledge of journalists on issues in the financial sector, stressing the need for closer collaboration with the media to enhance the quality of the reportage to promote factual and accurate information.
The NDIC boss, therefore, assured the NGE’s President that the corporation would support and strengthen partnership with the Guild in order to address the challenges and successfully achieve mutually beneficial objectives of enhancing public awareness.
In his remarks, the NGE President, Mustapha Isah, described the Guild as the NDIC’s partner in progress and commended the corporation on its achievements.
He noted that depositors had increased confidence in the safety of their savings in banks due to the corporation’s continuous diligence in its successful implementation of the Deposit Insurance System in Nigeria.
While soliciting for the corporation’s support for the Guild’s upcoming conference in September, Isah expressed the NGE’s commitment towards greater partnership and collaboration with the NDIC to achieve its public awareness goals.
