INEC chair to speak at IPI congress on 2019

Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof.
Mahmood Yakubu, has accepted to be a lead speaker at the World Congress of the International Press Institute holding in Abuja from June 21- 23.
The INEC chair will deliver the keynote address at the session on 2019 general elections coverage in Nigeria.
Yakubu conveyed his acceptance to a delegation of IPI which visited him in his office at the weekend.
About 300 journalists from all over the world will converge on Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory to attend the congress, according to leader of the delegation and the organisation’s National Committee Chairman in Nigeria, Malam Kabiru Yusuf.
Yusuf said the Nigerian chapter invited the IPI to hold its annual congress in the country for the first time because “it is good time, our democracy is maturing.
We want them (IPI members) to come and see (Nigeria) for themselves, rather that assume from a distance.” The IPI Chairman, who is also the Publisher of the Daily Trust newspaper titles, averred that the IPI “has been around for some 60 years” and “it moves from country to country every year to hold its annual congress, where delegates focus on the issues of press freedom and challenges of the media in societies.” The IPI members include: Alhaji Mohammed Idris, Chairman, Blueprint Newspapers, Mr Raheem Adedoyin, Secretary, IPI-Nigeria, Mr Waheed Odusile, President, Nigerian Union of Journalists, and Dr. Qasim Olalere Akinreti (Chairman, Lagos NUJ