By Zayamu Hassan
The Coordinator of Africa Health Budget Network (AHBN), Dr Aminu Magashi Garba, has advised the media to engage in positive investigative journalism, in order to help fight COVID-19 pandemic and improve mental health.
He gave the advice when giving recommendations during a one-day summit organised by the Crime Correspondents Association of Nigeria (CCAN), in Abuja, recently.
The summit had a theme: COVID-19, Drug Abuse, Mental Health: Implication on National Security.
Dr Magashi explained that investigative journalism is not all about crisis and indicting people, but that it could be positive when calling government to improve services.
“We need to look at the positive aspect of investigative journalism, because it is not all about crisis or indicting people. There are also positive aspects of investigative journalism.
“For example, the media can go into the Correctional facility and interview the inmates and the staff and find out the effect of mental health there with the aim of writing for the government to improve services. This is positive investigative journalism. And I will like to encourage the crime reporters to engage in that,” he explained.
Magashi added that, “We can also engage with the DSS and go to their facility and interview those detained and see how we can improve the system and services. I want to encourage positive investigative journalism whereby we can use that report to do advocacy for reform on the security apparatus.”
The AHBN coordinator added that in the security apparatus, there should be trained counsellors in the Police, DSS and the NDLEA.
He said: If they are engaging with criminals who have been affected by mental problem and drug abuse, they should not only be interested on why they were convicted, they should be counselled on their health and how the problem could be tackled.
“That means we need to also train the police that are doing the interrogation to understand the relationship between drug abuse and mental health. This way, we will be preventing crime apart from also converting the inmates.
“We need to also brainstorm to see how do we support the police so that when they are doing their investigation and interrogation, there are some counsellors who will understand the problem.
“We need to see how we can strengthen the media advocacy to see how to we can prevent crime and encourage investigative journalism and improve crime reporting and prevention.”
While explaining the havoc the COVID-19 and mental health had on national security, Dr Magashi said: “COVID-19 has created lock down, isolation, social distancing and affected people that are depressed (mental health), and also complicated the issue of drug abuse.
“If somebody losses job due to the COVID-19, there will be depression and that person could go into drug abuse. People that are into drug abuse have the tendency to commit crime because they are not doing anything. That affects the national security.
“We are here to galvanise action among the media, the Nigeria Police Force and the NDLEA, NAFDAC and we that are in the Civil Society so that we can work together and curtail crime that are related to COVID-19, mental health and drug abuse.”
He, however, reiterated that there is need for capacity building for the journalists to perform better.
He said the country need to create champions, that are passionate and engaging more on media advocacy and investigative journalism on effect of COVID-19, drug abuse and mental health.
It would be recalled that, recently, psychiatrist experts regretted that there is a high rate of mental illness in Nigeria which is of greater concern with the COVID-19 pandemic pushing the prevalence from 25 per cent to about 40 per cent.
They lamented that the rates of suicides, parasuicides, depression, anxiety disorders, rape and other violent behaviours are very disheartening with substance abuse challenges amongst teaming youth almost getting to a state of real emergencies in the society.
