Vice President Kashim Shettima yesterday urged the media to be partners in progress with the government by utilising their platforms to strengthen the country’s democracy through constructive journalism and critical thinking.

According to him, a society is destroyed not by the absence of ideas but by the “absence of men and women with the courage to interrogate ideas, to test them against reason, and to ask the difficult questions that save a people from the seduction of easy answers”.

Shettima made the comments during the public presentation of the book: “My Life and Journalists Hangout” and the 60th birthday of veteran journalist Babajide Kolade-Otitoju in Abuja. Governors Umo Eno (Akwa Ibom), Babajide Sanwo-Olu (Lagos), Kefas Agbu (Taraba), Usman Ododo (Kogi) and Babagana Zulum (Borno) were among the personalities at the event.

The VP saluted Babajide for his contributions to journalism and critical thinking, saying with his popular television programme, “Journalists Hangout,” he has been able to nurture a tradition of critical engagement in Nigeria.

Identifying the role of the media in strengthening democracy, Shettima said: “The measure of every democracy is not in the rituals of elections alone or the architecture of institutions.

“It is also in the sensibility and sensitivity of the media. A democracy depends on a media culture that knows when to probe, when to warn, when to illuminate, and when to restrain itself from becoming an accomplice to confusion.”