By Aisha Gambo

A Report Women! Female Reporters Leadership Programme (FRLP) Fellow, Aisha Gambo, on Thursday trained Mass Communication students at the Kaduna State University (KASU) on Solutions Journalism (SOJO).

The training is part of a leadership project conducted by Report Women!FRLP fellows, with support from the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ).

Gambo, who is also a Senior Correspondent with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), stated that the training was aimed at equipping the students with practical knowledge and skills on SOJO.

” We are not just training these students, we will encourage them to start identifying responses in their communities and reporting them.

“There are lots of opportunities in the field of Journalism especially Solutions Journalism; we will be sharing these opportunities with them to make them more competent,” she said.

While speaking, Mr Nathaniel Bivan , a Solutions Journalist, who presented a slide on ‘Finding and Reporting Excellent Solution Stories”, said students of mass communications should start writing these stories while in school.

He explained that a good solutions story must contain the four pillars of SOJO: Response, evidence, insight and limitation, adding that the students should aim at writing stories that make impact.

Another speaker, Yahuza Bawage who started practising journalism at school, urged mass communications students to start writing early so as to build a portfolio that would attract opportunities for them when they leave school.

He urged the students to form a union for campus journalists which would serve as a platform for them as students-journalists, adding that it would help them secure opportunities for capacity building and career development.

Some of the students, who participated in the training commended the organiser, saying that the session was eye-opening.

Amina Abdulkadir said she was hearing solutions journalism for the first time, adding that the training had helped her understand the concept and how to properly write SOJO stories.

Another participant, Usman Hassan, who is also a 400-level student, said he would step down the training to his colleagues in the Department and was ready to start writing SOJO stories.(NAN) (wwwnannews.ng)

Edited by Bashir Rabe Mani