Busola Ajibola. 📸: CJID
By Mariam Tijani, Temiloluwa Erinle
Two weeks ago, the Center for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) organized a journalism training and hackathon initiative on UNILAG campus. The president of The Press Club, Temiloluwa Erinle, had the privilege of speaking with Mrs. Busola Ajibola, the deputy director of journalism program at the CJID. Known for her poise, insight and commitment to development, Mrs. Busola shared her valuable perspectives on the goals of the training.
Interviewer: I want to first mention that this is the 45th campus journalism training. That shows a lot of intensity about campus journalism in Nigeria. Why the passion about this?
Mrs. Busola: The passion for us at the CJID is because we are aware that what we usually call the future is mostly now. So, it’s important for us to continue to build the capacity of young people. We understand that the future is usually always closer to us than we imagine, and it’s important for us to ensure that young people who are going to take over the baton of newsroom leadership, newsroom management and the economy of the newsroom must be equipped.
Right from what we have discovered over the years, there’s usually this gap between what is happening in classrooms and the realities of the newsroom and journalistic practices. This is not to in any way minimize the effort of teachers of journalism, but because journalism is a fast evolving space, it’s just important that the knowledge of the students is updated as soon as there are new bodies of knowledge in the field.
And then, you also realize that updating their knowledge is even more critical at a time like this when there is the wave of information disorder, what you know as disinformation, misinformation and malinformation. Now, there is the introduction of AI which can be used in generating defects that can really distort our information space. The impact of that on people’s lives, on distorting our electoral system or distorting even our democracy just makes it important for everybody to have the knowledge that mainstream journalists are building. We have to continuously scale down to young people in schools of journalism.
There is also the new dimension of our technology that intersects with media. Young people are the ones who participate in the digital sphere, so we have an obligation to make sure that we are also equipping them with digital tools and knowledge of digital skills that they need to navigate that space. Plus, not everybody who practices journalism is necessarily a student of journalism.
Yeah, definitely.
From what we know, there is a concept of citizen journalism. Anyone who has a phone, who is on a social media platform can aspire to do journalism. However, it’s important that if they’re going to do it, they are exposed to the ethics that guide it. If you’re not trained as a journalist, but you are interested in practicing it, disseminating news, and holding leaders accountable, you just need that knowledge of professionalism. Journalism is not just news dissemination. It is the professionalism that is demonstrated in practicing it.
So, it’s important that we help them to understand that if you’re going to be sharing information, it has to be accurate. You must understand the principle of rigorous verification, people’s right to privacy, especially if it is not in the interest of the public.
Thank you for that. So, why did you decide on UNILAG? You have done UNILAG before, and probably there are schools you’ve not done before. Is there any reason you have returned to UNILAG this time?
The last time we were here was about four years ago, and I can tell you for a fact that none of the people we trained four years ago were here.
Yeah, exactly.
I think what also brought us back here again was because this is the first time we are doing this training at the intersection of journalism, tech and AI. CJID had just recently launched this vision of training about 10,000 young people in digital skills and AI by 2025. UNILAG already has a vibrant community of young people that are already participating within the tech and AI space, so it just makes sense that we bring this here, and I think that was a very good decision because at the Hackathon yesterday, the tools and products that young people demonstrated were mind blowing.
I’m talking about young people that are in 100 and 200 level. It’s amazing to see what these minds are already conceiving and how what they bring to the table can really help in resolving our challenges as a nation where the right investments are made, and when they are able to access the right kind of support. For the journalism students that we trained on the first day, we expose them to tech tools; Python, web design and others that they could use. For some of them this is the first time they have been exposed to that kind of tech training.Â
So, with the vibrant community of tech oriented young people that already exist in Unilag, and the journalism center that has just been exposed, we see the possibility of peer mentoring. Those who are already equipped with the knowledge of tech can provide immediate accessible support for the ones that are just being introduced. We already saw that happening from the hackathon yesterday. Some of them came today again to provide hands-on peer mentoring while our experts and resource persons took a lead. I think that’s why we’re here and we’re hoping to be able to replicate that in other schools across the country.
Thank you very much. I want to ask, how was the whole experience of planning for and organizing this UNILAG edition?
I would say the response that we got from UNILAG was impressive. Very fast too. We had reached out to the Directorate of International Relations, Partnerships and Grants and the response was sweet. We were assigned the UNILAG Design Studio that we didn’t have to pay for. I’m aware that ordinarily when people have to use the space, they pay. But we were allowed to use it for free. Aside from that, UNILAG did facilitate the partnership between Unilag Architect Network, which they eventually took over the first place winner for the awards, which was 500,000 naira.
It’s impressive to see how invested the management of the school is in advancing the knowledge of their students on digital technology. I would say it’s been a smooth partnership and where we are able to support, we donated some laptops to help equip persons with disabilities with tech skills. We were able to also donate about 10 laptops to students who participated in this training. This is a very valuable partnership and we are just hoping that we’re able to do more with it.
You mentioned that you introduced the tech training for the first time, and you pretty much explained the reason why you think it is very necessary to integrate tech in journalism. This is the 45th campus journalism training that CJID would organize. How do you think this program has evolved over the years?
We started the Next Gen Campus Reporter Training in 2017 to 2025. It started out with training on investigative reporting, news reports, and many more. But over the years, we have continued to review our curriculum to meet new journalistic demands. We now train on fact check, data journalism and gender mainstreaming. We even do open source investigation, and the good thing is that the training never ends in four days for us.
So, what we do is that after we do the four day training which is like the entry point, once the student begins to demonstrate some of the knowledge that they have acquired, we try to assign mentors who would edit their stories. You know, we publish them on the campus reporter website, where we think they need to develop more skills. We give them training slots in some of the other higher level training that we organize for mainstream journalists. We get them to attend some of our global conferences too.
All of these allow us to follow through with them year after year to monitor their progress, and I can tell you that between 2017 and now, we have over 40 alumni of our program working in newsrooms across the world. Yes. Premium times, The Cable, BBC and many more. They’re all over the place, doing wonders, leading their newsrooms, making us proud and reassuring us that this is a cause that is worthy of our efforts and of our investments.
One final question. What next?
More of this training at the intersection of technology and journalism, because the future, if not the present status quo for media is technology. The media is not going to survive if it does not get a good grasp of how to navigate the digital space first because it is its major contender. So, as we continue to equip young people to confront fake news, tackle information disorder, and improve and protect our information space, we would also continue to equip them on tech tools, AI, and all the digital skills that can help them to improve the quality of journalism in Nigeria and across the world; wherever they find themselves.
Also, we nudge them to begin to think about the economy of the media. How can technology really help in cracking that problem? From what we saw yesterday, the very groundbreaking and impressive innovations that they came up with, there is hope that perhaps the answer we’re looking for will come from one of these spaces, one of these young people. And so, yeah, the future is to do more, to do more, and to do more of this.
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