By Omodele Adigun

As Lafarge Africa Plc focuses on circular economy,  climate & energy, environment and community in its just-released 2020 Sustainability Report, the cement manufacturer has been urged to train media professionals as its Sustainability watchdog

According to the Bureau Chief of Bloomberg Nigeria, Mr Anthony Osae-Brown,  that is the only way to bring environmental degradation, flooding and other environmentally related issues in the country to the global attention.

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 Osae-Brown, who was the facilitator at its virtual edition  of its Meet & Greet Forum on Thursday, lamented that local media lack the capacity to report on topical issues currently trending  globally.

His words: “In the local media space, they don’t have the resources and resolve to focus on green issues, environmental sustainability, flooding and other environmentally related issues. I appeal to organisations  like Lafarge to train journalists on these issues because, of course, a lot of journalists can position their career just by reporting on green issues.

“It is a topical issue globally. A lot of people are interested in what happens in that sector. But local capacity to report on them is lacking. So we need a higher capacity to report on them. For international media, most of them have dedicated desks just focusing on green issues and giving it priority in their reporting. If the local media are trained to report on green issues, then they can report more on what is happening locally to the global space. Some of these things attract global attention . For us, it is a big area of reporting, which we are really focusing on. But people need to understand it. You published your Sustainability Report, if you don’t push it, most journalists would never take it seriously because it is not their area.