2 Chapter THE OPENING REMARKS Poor attention to welfare unacceptable By Lanre Arogundade, Director IPC As the fourth estate of the realm saddled with the constitutional responsibility of monitoring governance and holding the government accountable to the people, there is a great burden of expectation on the Nigerian media. Among these expectations, especially from the point of view of the public, is that the media should do more of investigative journalism in order to expose, the more, acts of corruption. The media is expected to make elected leaders account for their electoral promises while closely monitoring the political processes in such a way that people can make informed choices at election time. Also expected from the media is greater attention to the basic needs of the people for jobs, food, security, health care, education etc. In summary the public expects the media to set agenda for accountability, transparency, openness and good governance. In order to assist the media in meeting these expectations, the International Press Centre's(IPC), has since inception in 1999 organized series of capacity building programmes for journalists with the overall thrust of ensuring that there is a new direction for governance and political reporting that accords highest priority to development issues. But while the hundreds of reporters and editors that have participated in these activities always stress how beneficial they are to their work, they also always identify poor conditions of work and pay as major barrier to their application. The argument oftentimes gets heated whenever the issue of upholding professional standards and complying with the code of ethics comes up. Some would claim they are luxuries that fly in the face of reality. This is because, increasingly, the attitude of most media proprietors is that the jobs they offer are beneficial meal tickets to be used as the beneficiary deems fit. Under this prevailing culture, Reporters, who usually earn peanuts, are sometimes not paid salaries for several months. Against this background, the African Media Barometer(AMB) report on Nigeria by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung(FES) has further established that constraints such as dearth of resources and the lure of gratification tend to subvert the drive for accuracy and fairness.