Haunted by Truth: Nigerian Journalists Caught Between Duty and Death

Though the pen is said to be mightier than the sword, there are times when the sword tries to silence the pen. This is a testament to the dangers journalists like Ibanga Isine face when seeking the truth in a hostile environment. His first encounter with danger was in 2003, shortly after he joined The Punch, a Nigerian newspaper.

He investigated the killing of Angela Ihentuge, a seven-month pregnant woman in Imo State, southeastern Nigeria. Angela was murdered and her foetus removed. The killers also mutilated her body, removing her tongue, toes, and private parts. 

Not long after the story made the front page of the Punch, hired assassins visited Isine on Feb. 20, 2003. Isine, according to his account, narrowly avoided death, but his properties suffered destruction. 

He got no compensation or treatment for the trauma. Yet, he moved on to tell important stories.

Years later, in 2008, he encountered another challenge while covering the environmental devastation done to Ogoni land in Rivers State as a result of oil spillage by oil companies.  

He told HumAngle that he was arrested by a police unit attached to an oil company, who later handed him over to militants “threatening to kill me in the forest.” 

“It was another police officer who understood my language that rescued me from the militants’ den,” he said.

In 2018, while investigating farmer-herder conflicts in Kaduna, northwestern Nigeria, Isine visited several communities to document the agonies of victims of the violence. But when he returned, he became traumatised by the gory experiences he had on the field, so he abandoned the story.

By 2020, mass killings in Southern Kaduna had become too rampant, so he decided to visit the affected communities on a fact-finding mission. However, his exposé angered powerful forces, as he challenged the state government’s narrative about the violence in the state.

“I uncovered evidence of attacks on farmers, contradicting the governor’s claims. I revealed the truth, leading to the swift targeting of my sources,” he stated. “The governor’s spokespersons refused to comment, yet the houses of those who spoke with me were being burned. My sources warned me to flee.”

Sometime in October 2020, while returning home from his work station in Abuja, Isine escaped another assassination and had to travel to his village to escape death. 

Isene, however, claimed that ActionAid, a non-governmental organisation working to combat poverty and injustice, advised him to flee the country in early 2021, as his life was in danger. The killing of his sources and their relatives had intensified. So, he fled to Ghana.

But even there, he was hunted. 

“When I got to Ghana, they (assassins) came looking for me again, and the [NGOs] attempted to take me to Burkina Faso or Ivory Coast to seek refuge, but I said I was tired of running. I was losing my mind and couldn’t sleep very well at night. I spent four months indoors, losing my grip on reality,” he added. 

Today, Isine remains in hiding. He sneaks in and out of Nigeria, struggling to rebuild his life. Each morning, he wakes up feeling like a part of him is missing. The stories he’d uncovered and the sources he’d protected – all seemed like a distant memory. 

Meanwhile, Isine is not the only Nigerian journalist who has faced threats in the course of reporting. This is due to the failure of authorities to promote a free press. In fact, many journalists have resorted to self-censorship. For those who remain brave, they continue to face attacks, harassment, and threats.

When truth comes at a cost

For Akani Gbolahan*, he visited Osun State in southwestern Nigeria in 2020 to investigate Chinese miners’ illegal gold mining activities. However, he was confronted by local chiefs and police officers, aiding the dangerous mining activities capable of endangering the environment.

Though Section 44 (3) of the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Law of 1999 provides that ownership and control of all minerals in Nigeria are vested in the federal government, many illegal miners operate in Nigeria without getting a license from the government. 

In a bid to expose the anomalies, the reporter visited various illegal gold mining sites in various areas of the state on a fact-finding assignment. 

Narrating his bitter experience during his investigative reporting trip, Gbolahan told HumAngle that he was harassed by three Chinese nationals and police officers, who questioned his effrontery for coming to their sites.

“My encounter was a bitter one. It made me question the activities of the Nigerian Police Force, as their men were seen protecting illegal miners. One of them even told me I shouldn’t have come to their sites at all. The police seized my phone and deleted all the videos and pictures captured earlier,” the journalist said. 

“When I left the site for another place, I encountered that same challenge. This time, I was assaulted by hoodlums, who denied me entrance into the company and made tracing the environmental destruction being done difficult for me. They even threatened to kill me and bury my body in one of their dug pits.”

He added that residents of the communities alleged that illegal gold miners and police often conspired to frustrate journalists’ and environmental activists’ efforts. 

Following the incident, Gbolahan became traumatised, and it took him several days before he could proceed to write reports on his findings.

“A traditional ruler who gave farm lands to illegal gold miners even threatened to kill me. He cursed and warned that he would resort to spiritual means to ensure I am not useful to my family,” he told HumAngle.

In a related incident, Damilola Ayeni, a Nigerian environmental journalist and a former editor at the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), was arrested on Aug. 31, 2023, while on the second leg of a cross-border environmental investigation in the north of the Republic of Benin.

He was surprised when local police falsely accused him of being a jihadist, presumably in an attempt to solicit a bribe for his freedom. Not only that, the Benin police detained him incommunicado for nine days. 

“First, I thought it was an arrest and that more proof that I was a journalist would get me out, but it looked like a kidnapping, as the rangers wouldn’t let me inform anyone of my detention,” Ayeni, the traumatised journalist, said after his release. 

He added that it took the combined efforts of sustained media pressure, relentless work by the Nigerian Embassy in Benin, legal representation, and advocacy efforts facilitated by FIJ and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) to get him released.

From reporting to getting shot

While journalists who spoke with HumAngle battled trauma and physical assaults, many have lost their lives in pursuit of stories, leaving their families and colleagues to wonder if their sacrifices will ever be acknowledged.

For instance, Alex Ogbu, a freelance journalist, was on an assignment covering protesting members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN), commonly known as the Shiite, in Abuja, North-central Nigeria, when he was shot dead on Jan. 21, 2020. 

It was one of many instances where security operatives fired live bullets at protesters. As soon as the protest began, the Police arrived. As they shot sporadically to disperse the protesters, Ogbu was unlucky; he got shot in the head, and that was the end of the 50-year-old man’s life and his journalism career. 

The police would later call his wife, Francisca and lie that the journalist had “little issue”. On getting to the police station in the Utako area of Abuja, the story changed. 

“My husband died when our daughter was a year and a half old. Life has been hard since I was not working while he was with us. Our daughter does not know how her father looked,” Francisca told HumAngle in an earlier interview. 

She added that her friends and family have, since 2020, been supporting her with stipends to raise her daughter. Also, her efforts to get justice have proved abortive many years later.

Similarly, Pelumi Onifade’s family continues to bear the brunt of his profession. Their bright son is no more, and they have yet to get justice since he was killed on duty, on Oct. 24, 2020.

He was shot while covering the looting of food warehouses where the government had stored COVID-19 relief supplies during the famous #EndSARS protest. 

“We have not been given any information, and we don’t know who even took his body to the morgue in the first place,” said Bose, Onifade’s mother, in one of her interviews with journalists in 2021. “Something must have happened for his body to end up at the morgue.”

She added that her last conversation with her only son was a day before he was shot by the police while on an assignment. “I cooked porridge that morning (the day he was shot) and was hoping he would eat some when he returned.”

In September 2024, a Federal High Court in Lagos ordered that the death of the 20-year-old reporter be probed. In his order, Justice Ayokunle Olayinka Faji directed the Lagos State Attorney-General to take all necessary steps to see to the investigation and to conduct a coroner’s inquest to ascertain the cause of the death. 

The Court added that the State Government should not only establish the cause of Onifade’s death but also identify and prosecute those responsible. As of the time of filing this report, the relatives of the deceased are still anticipating justice. 

Meanwhile, Nigeria, from the military era to the current democracy, has a long history of attacks on the press and unresolved killings of journalists. One of the country’s foremost investigative journalists, Dele Giwa, was assassinated by a parcel bomb way back on Oct. 19, 1986.  Till now, no one has been arrested or prosecuted in connection with the killing.

The need for change

The experiences of journalists and relatives who spoke with HumAngle are a testament to the human cost of journalism in the face of repression and a reminder that the pursuit of truth comes with a price, one that many journalists pay with their mental health, their families, and sometimes, their lives.

As Isine, for instance, looks back on his career, he said that the system needs to change and journalists like him need support, protection, and a safe space to tell their stories without fear of reprisal.

Because of past experiences of their senior colleagues in the profession, many journalists are scared of putting their lives on the line. 

“I have listened to different stories from fearless journalists on how reporting the truth can be a matter of life and death. The stories have left an indelible mark on my psyche. In fact, I used to be passionate about investigative reporting, but after seeing what happened to some of our colleagues, I’m scared,” Medinat Azeez*, a young journalist, told HumAngle. 

“The thought of being kidnapped, beaten, or worse keeps me up at night. I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering if I’ll be the next target.”

As the Constitution and those in power fail to protect journalists, self-censorship is becoming increasingly common, with reporters avoiding stories that might put them in harm’s way. However, this threatens the very foundation of journalism: the pursuit of truth.

To address these challenges, there’s a need for a better support system, increased protection, and a renewed commitment by those in power to press freedom. 

*Asterisk names are pseudonyms we have used to protect some journalists’ identities as requested. 

This report was produced by HumAngle in partnership with the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) as part of a project documenting press freedom issues in Nigeria.