(A remark on World Press Freedom Day when the Editors and SERAP celebrated it)
On March 16, 2015 the then candidate Muhammadu Buhari told the NPAN officials: I won’t tamper with press freedom.

Buhari, who then said a change revolution was imminent in the country without firing a shot also assured the influential members of the Newspapers’ Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN) and the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) at an interaction in Abuja: “I want to give you my full assurances that in this democratic dispensation, I will ensure that the Nigerian constitution is upheld. This includes respect for the media, respect for the right to free expression and freedom of speech….I have said elsewhere that I cannot change the past. But I can change the present and the future.  Dictatorship goes with military rule as do edicts such as Decree 4…However, I am a former head of state, note the emphasis on the word ‘former’– military ruler and now a converted democrat, who is ready to operate under democratic norms. “I give you my full assurances that the Nigerian media will be free under our APC government.”

In the end, the loose cannons and spokespersons in the administration gave the journalists of conscience the Jones-Abiri treatment: link them to terrorism and other related criminal activities, detain them and tell the human rights and international press bodies that the journalists are all criminals and scoundrels. 

Even when they report the truth, they can be charged with a dead law such as sedition and there will be court orders to detain them as they just did to Premium Times Samuel Ogundipe the police curiously detained and asked to disclose the source of his information about a police letter. 

Under the same Buhari we can recall the ordeal of Jones Abiri before The Guardian’s robust editorial exposed the lies of even a friend of the press then and a hit-man for government during the IPI’s first Convention in Nigeria. Recall that when the International Press Institute (IPI) asked for the release of Jones Abiri on 23 June 2018 when President Buhari was declaring the IPI’s first Conference in Nigeria open in Abuja, the Federal Government through the then Town-crier of “Fake News” and “Hate Speech’, the Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, said there was no such thing and the then Chairman of NJI Board of Trustees Ismaila Isa Funtua corroborated Lai Mohammed’s lie that there was nobody in detention.

Same for citizen Samuel Ogundipe: some local newspapers never published the detention of the Premium Times reporter just as some others curiously kept the story inside. Recall too that that the Inspector General of Police then who meretriciously responded to the Acting President Yemi Osinbajo’s directive to overhaul SARS that same day with just a name change and replacement of Commissioner in charge of SARS, ordered the arrest of three journalists of Premium Times that same day.

Remember that the same Buhari who assured the people as a candidate that he was born again got his pioneer DG,DSS Lawal Daura to evict a former DG, DSS from his Lagos home on December 2, 2015, also detained Jones Abiri for two years and denied it, raided the homes of Court of Appeal and Supreme Court Justices at dawn, broke into Akwa Ibom Government House’s cash vaults and claimed he carted away dollars never reported as exhibits anywhere. 

Remember too that barely four months after he was sworn in, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu also assured the officials of the same NPAN of freedom of expression. In a December 2023 interaction with the Newspapers Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), Tinubu was clear that his administration would always respect media freedoms and divergent views.

They always assure us that they will not tamper with freedom of expression, but as Idi Amin of Uganda, then a strong man, once noted, unfortunately, there would be no freedom guaranteed after expression. 

First, they came for the jugular of free and independent press when they collaborated with the federal legislature to introduce an anti- social media bill, sponsored by Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah (APC, Kebbi State). 

The sponsor said then that the bill was intended to prevent unwarranted negative spotlight on public and political office holders. All stakeholders roundly rejected the hateful bill as a masked gag on the media. Then in March 2018, they came with another toxic one called “Hate Speech Bill” again sponsored by Senator Sabi Abdullahi (APC, Niger State), who said the bill, which carried a death sentence seeks “to eliminate hate speech and discourage harassment on the grounds of ethnicity, religion or race among others. According to a provision in the bill, “any person who uses, publishes, presents, produces, plays, provides, distributes and/or directs the performance of any material, written and/or visual, which is threatening, abusive or insulting or involves the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words, commits and offence”. 

The penalties are scary: a jail sentence of not less than five years or a fine of not less than N10 million or both and a death sentence “where any form of hate speech results in the death of another person”. Both bills are dead but the snake is only scotched, but not killed as Shakespeare noted. There is an anti-media bill in National Assembly now that has passed through some stages. We have to be vigilant.

The fear now
Data collected by Media Rights Agenda (MRA), a frontline press and freedom of expression advocacy organization indicates that 45 attacks on journalists have occurred in Nigeria since 2023. The MRA data spotlighted security agencies, which were responsible for 62 percent of the 45 cases of attacks documented, while hoodlums were identified as being responsible for 16 percent. Unidentified actor such as kidnappers, armed individuals, and others were reportedly responsible for 15 per cent. Further breakdown of the data by gender showed that 37 of the incidents were targeted at male journalists, representing 82 per cent while four of those targeted were female, representing nine percent of the total attacks.

In one of the disturbing cases in which freedom of the press, and the rights of a journalist were undermined under the current administration, Editor of First News online newspaper, Segun Olatunji was picked up by soldiers from his home on March 15, 2024. The arbitrary use of the military for the purpose of effecting the arrest of journalist in a democratic setting was widely condemned by press freedom watchdogs. Olatunji was held incommunicado for fourteen days until he was released following widespread calls by scores of press freedom advocates.

The story was similar for Daniel Ojukwu, a reporter for the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), who spent 10 days in arbitrary detention after he was abducted in Lagos and flown to Abuja. It again took the intervention of civil society and press freedom organizations who organized a protest at the Police Headquarters before he was released.

Ojukwu’s ordeal in the hands of the Nigeria police followed an investigative report published by his platform, which exposed corruption in the office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on the sustainable Development Goals. Even more challenging for journalists, is the emerging trend of law enforcement officers using the Cyber Crime Act to hound reporters blowing the whistle or putting the spotlight on issues of accountability in governance. Specifically, the Cybercrime Act, 2015, now the Cybercrime Act of 2024, after it was amended by the National Assembly and signed into law by President Tinubu, has become the law of choice for the arbitrary detention, persecution and harassment of journalists.

Government officials and politically exposed persons who are averse to critical media reporting on issues of corruption and lack of accountability in the use of public resources, have found a potent weapon of persecution using the law. It is pertinent to observe that the most prominent cases of arbitrary arrest of journalists since the onboarding of the Tinubu Presidency have affected reporters who put the spotlight on issues of use of public resources.

Section 24, which dwells on “cyber stalking” and the punishment of three years imprisonment or a fine of N7,000,000 has made the work of journalists across the one of high risk. Significantly, the apprehension within media and press freedom circles, is the notion that journalists can no longer merely rely on regular proclamations about the government’s readiness to protect press freedoms. President Tinubu in his days as a pro-democracy activist was an ally of the free press. It is quite ironical that on his watch, the press is having a raw deal.

Meanwhile, we are here to restate the role of the media as clearly spelt out in Section 22 of the constitution – to monitor governance and hold public officers to account. Only good and independent journalism can deliver this tough job. This is where people will feel that the news media actually promote public good. In other words, development agencies should not lose sight of this fact: that only a truly independent news media can monitor governance, lest they become lapdogs. That is why Sina Odugbemi, former Programme Head, Communication for Governance and Accountability Programme (CommGAP) at the World Bank (Institute) once observed in a (World Bank) publication titled, “Public Sentinel: News Media and Governance Reform” that, ‘A focus on strengthening institutions like the news media is not yet seen as a core business in many development agencies. That is therefore why opportunities to strengthen the news media will always depend on the situation in each country and will always depend on the interplay of forces within each country.

Odugbemi in the same vein believes that, ‘the political economic realities will always determine what can be achieved’. What that means is that those who want to improve media systems in their own countries must learn to build effective coalitions. That is where work is really needed. In that treatise, Odugbemi says nonetheless, it is possible to bring together what we know right now about how news media can contribute to good governance outcomes. Second, it is possible to draw the necessary policy implications. That is why the collaboration with SERAP and others is critical. This is where the political economy of a free press that has become a huge challenge is relevant in understanding why the economic policy of the present administration too is affecting press freedom.

To be continued…

This is an excerpt from remarks by MARTINS OLOJA, Former MD/Editor-in-Chief, The Guardian, Fellow of the Nigerian Guild of Editors at the 2025 WPFD Press Conference by Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) & SERAP At Radisson Hotel. GRA, Ikeja. May 3, 2025