 In view of Nigeria's continuous suspension of Twitter and recent moves to push through two bills to amend the National Broadcast in Act and the Nigeria Press Council Act, the U.S. Consulate General has organized a program to discuss the new and continuing threats to press freedom and freedom of expression in Nigeria. The theme of the program is tagged a Convention on Press Freedom, Freedom of Expression and Civic Space in Nigeria. Fumi Unwajefe has more details. The U.S. Consulate's event on press freedom and right of expression, opened with the U.S. Consul General Claire Perangelo, emphasizing on the value of promoting and protecting a free press, has an essential pillar of responsive and unaccountable democracy. The Biden-Harris administration is committed to putting human rights at the heart of our foreign policy, and that includes press freedom and freedom of expression. I know that you all agree with me that the free press is a core pillar to any successful democracy. Ensuring that the media is not stifled is not just the responsibility of the government, but the media itself which needs to look inward. Ethics is often personal. Individuals decide to be ethical in the discharge of their duties, and that is what we should emphasize. If we have more people holding themselves to account in newsrooms in a matter of time, the people who kill stories will reduce in number. It is important that the media understands their legal power and the purpose which they fulfill in the society. The duty to make government an elected or selected politicians accountable is not just the duty of the media alone. The media also has the duty to assist the people to make the government accountable. Too often the media may not understand that that duty is even more onerous and sacrosanct than the duty that they have, because there are some things the media will not be able to do by itself in holding the government accountable. The need to continue to push for events like this to encourage the media to speak up was emphasized. We hope that the capacity building, sending journalists to the United States for exchange programs will really help build the capacity so journalists can report and keep reporting until people are really seeing that difference is being made because journalism cannot stop, the media cannot stop, and social media will not stop. And so it's really incumbent upon all of us to keep pushing and making sure that press freedom is respected and press freedom is expanded. Hello, hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.