Africa Media Development Foundation (AMDF) has named Omeiza Balogun of Fedreal Radio Corporation of Nigeria as its Journalist for the month of June.
The media development organisation selects a journalist each month to showcase what they have done and contributed to journalism, especially in Africa.
According to AMDF Balogun is a graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria with over ten years post graduate experience in Journalism, development practice, event management, public relations, writing, acting, conflict resolutions, crisis management and media relation consultancy.
He is from Igarra, Akoko-Edo Local Government Area, Edo. Balogun is a Senior Reporter: News and Current Affairs with Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN.
Currently Balogun is researching on the use of Short Movies for Development: Mirroring the Options before the People – with a view to revolutionizing the mind-set of people in the rural areas towards developmental discourse; an attempt to stimulate a discourse that will lead to building a link between aesthetic values of rural people’s experience and development.
According to him, one of the major challenges I face as a reporter is people’s attitude towards the profession. In recent times, the profession has witnessed a lot of quacks whose activities has led to vote of no confidence by those who hitherto were willing to give timely and useful information that would help in the job.
I was motivated by the strong impact the pen profession has on the society. The impact was driven by my passion to make a change in the society. While growing up I saw a lot of things going wrong due to lack of information, so I had the drive that someday I will have the voice to change negative narratives, send right information, and get the people and society at large to change for better.
My most challenging report was when I had to investigate the extra judicial killing of a UNIBEN undergraduate. It was challenging in the sense that my Superiors in the office felt that I should not venture into the matter, while the high officers of the Nigeria police were also not interested in changing their earlier claim that the boy was an armed robber and was killed during a cross fire between him and the police. Despite discouraging tunes, I went ahead with my investigation which eventually saw to the arrest of those involved.
source: http://amdf-centre.org/omeiza-balogun-is-amdf-journalist-of-the-month
