By Becky John
Mrs Ratidzai Ndhlovu, the Country Representative, United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), has sought to revive the fund’s technical partnership with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) as part of its strategy to strengthen its operations. Ndhlovu said this in Abuja on Friday when she visited the Managing Director of NAN, Mr Ima Niboro.
She said UNFPA acknowledged the importance of the media in its operations and was eager to strengthen existing relationships while it remained focused in reviving broken ones. “When I first arrive in the country my first question was where is the media, where is the partner, because I am used to working with a media as a partner, then I discovered that we used to have it but now it is not there.
“I said no we cannot work with the media on ad hoc basis; we need a proper relationship and for us to have a relationship we need the mother body, so that is how we started now trying to meet you so that we could discuss.
“For the media they are most critical partner because they cut across what the other partners are doing.’’ Ndhlovu stressed the need for UNFPA to resuscitate its relationship with NAN and faulted the suspension of the earlier partnership with the agency. Responding, Niboro thanked the UNFPA envoy for identifying with the media and particularly acknowledging the capacity of NAN in actualizing the objectives of the fund.
Niboro said in spite of the challenge of funding caused by the fall in crude oil prices the agency still has the capacity in terms of personnel and facilities to deliver on its mandate. He said the agency still remained the most credible source of information to other media organisations in the country and would continue to strengthen its operational base to serve the agency’s numerous clients.
“Thank you for coming and thank you for your interest in reawakening this partnership. “Since I came here I have tried to focus this agency on creating wealth and the way the news agency can create wealth is to have partnerships like this. “There are people who require our services, it is not just UNFPA, there are other agencies out there that require our services. “We have full bouquet of products that we can deploy that will service your organisation; we have the PR wire, we have our normal NAN portal, we have the NAN mobile, we have our website and then we can even create more products like what I call client specific.
“We have the personnel, we have the equipment, we have the background and we have the experts.’’
The managing director assured the UNFPA that the agency would give its best to sustain the relationship that would be built between NAN and the fund. He said NAN’s reach and expertise would be deployed to assist UNFPA implement its programmes and policies in all parts of the country.
