The United Nations Population Fund Agency says it is reviving its partnership with News Agency of Nigeria as part of strategy to strengthen its operations in Nigeria.
The Country Representative of UNFPA, Ratidzai Ndhlovu, stated this during a courtesy visit to the Managing Director of NAN, Ima Niboro, in Abuja on Friday.
Ndhlovu said UNFPA acknowledged the importance of the media in its operations and was eager to strengthen existing relationship with the media and revived “the broken ones”.
She said: “When I first arrived in the country, my first question was where is the media?
“Where is the partner?
“Because I am used to working with 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 can 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 revive its relationship with NAN and faulted the suspension of the earlier partnership with the agency.
In his response, Niboro thanked the UNFPA Country Rep for identifying with the media and particularly acknowledging the capacity of NAN in actualising its objectives.
Niboro said in spite of the challenge of funding caused by the fall in crude oil prices, the agency still had the capacity in terms of personnel and facilities to deliver on its mandate.
He said the agency still remained the most the credible source of information in the country and remained a force to be reckoned with in the media industry.
He said: “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.”
Niboro assured the visiting UNFPA country representative that the agency would give its best to sustain the relationship that would be built between NAN and UNFPA.
He said NAN’s reach and expertise would be deployed to assist UNFPA implement its programmes and policies in all parts of the country.
NAN reports that Niboro and his guest later went into closed-door meeting to discuss details of the planned partnership.
The work of the UNFPA involves promotion of the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity.
This is done through major national and demographic surveys and with population censuses.
The data generated are used to create programmes to reduce poverty and address issues concerning the rights of particular minority population groups.
One of their aims is to ensure that “every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect”.
Their work involves the improvement of reproductive health, including creation of national strategies and protocols, and providing supplies and services to these minority groups, as well as internal migrants and refugees, the elderly and the handicapped.
The organisation has recently been known for its worldwide campaign against obstetric fistula and female genital mutilation.