While the above observations have been severally made, there has been little research or baseline survey done on the initiatives to address corruption and media coverage of federal budget processes. With the support of USAID and PACT, the International Press Centre, Lagos conducted base line survey on the print media coverage of these issues with the belief that the findings of such exercise will eventually help in directing the attention of the media towards them and help in designing appropriate training materials and guides for journalists on approach to reporting issues in budgets and corruption. That was the first phase of the planned intervention. Findings of the survey which is going through the final stages of processing will be publicised among immediate stakeholders and circulated among media organisations, media development organisations and various schools of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The second phase of the project is designed to feature activities geared at crystallizing some of the recommendations from the first phase into actions. These actions include Engagement of the Media to improve on amount and accuracy of reporting; Training of ADVANCE CSO partners and other relevant CSOs on partnering with media in their oversight and advocacy works in the fight against corruption; Creation of model column in the media on reporting cost of corruption.

A major component of the project is this training. Designed as Training-of-Trainers project, we strongly believe that one of the bet approaches to improve on the capacity of the media to engage these issues is to make the media get actively involved in the training of its editorial personnel. These include people on the field and on the desks.