Going after the wrong “Big Man”, or politically well-connected person, can be dangerous.
“In a general climate of lawlessness, if a newspaper publishes something that a big man or some part of the government doesn’t like, it’s likely to have its offices ransacked by a mob,” Campbell said.
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Nigerian journalists are still killed for their work, just as activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged by the military government in 1995. The Committee to Protect Journalists names Nigeria as one of 13 countries where the murder of a journalist is most likely to go unpunished.
Since 2009 at least five journalists have been murdered with no perpetrators brought to book, the organisation says.
Yet overall the press has always been good at defending its freedom: even military dictator Sani Abacha never fully suppressed its feistiness in the 1990s.
“Press freedom has always been good,” said popular journalist and blogger Tolu Ogunlesi. “It’s hard to muzzle or intimidate the press in Nigeria. Even Abacha failed to control them: they went underground … (and) used radio.”
“ANY KIND OF STORY”
Taking stock of newspapers in Africa’s biggest economy is a dizzying exercise: there are at least a dozen major national dailies running to 40 pages each and scores of regional titles.
The big dailies are clearly influenced by their counterparts in Britain, which ruled Nigeria before independence in 1960. The Sun even publishes photos of “page three girls”, albeit fully clothed, unlike the topless models in its British namesake.
But big circulations and flashy headlines fail to mask the sometimes low standards of an industry which, much like the country itself, is mired in corruption and political influence.
Slipshod reporting helps to fuel misinformation about the insurrection in the north, especially since the bulk of the big newspapers, and their reporters, are based in the mainly Christian south.
“You can cook up any kind of story and it gets published,” said Dayo Aiyetan, a reporter and the executive director at the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, a Nigerian NGO. “You can malign anybody, you can libel anybody and nothing happens. That’s the environment.”
Aiyetan works with the U.S. Ford Foundation on a programme to help train Nigerian journalists in investigative reporting techniques and raise standards. But that also means tackling the culture of “brown envelopes” or bribes for stories.
The practice is so widespread that some reporters say they aren’t paid by their employers. Instead, they are expected to earn money from the people they interview.
“The press is certainly lively, though you wouldn’t want to rely on them,” said a Western diplomat. “Sometimes they expect to be paid to write a story, and we have to say ‘No, I’m afraid we don’t do that.'”
Bribery compromises reporters’ independence and is another disincentive to expose corruption. Even some newspaper owners face corruption allegations.
The owner of Nigeria’s Independent newspaper, former Delta State Governor James Ibori, is serving 13 years in prison in Britain after pleading guilty to 10 counts of money laundering.
“You cannot expect these newspapers to be absolutely free to do the kind of critical reportage we need to make an impact on corruption and good governance in Nigeria,” said Aiyetan, the investigative reporter. “It’s actually not just corruption we’re fighting. It’s the impunity with which people steal money.”
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