Strangled in Silence: The Unseen Forces Stifling Nigeria’s Press Freedom

Drawing from her experience as a survivor of sexual abuse in the university, Yemisi Adeoye*, found her voice in telling powerful stories about gender and resilience as a young and ambitious journalist with an online media outlet in the Lekki area of Lagos, South West Nigeria. 

However, her promising career took a hit when her publisher refused to publish a report exposing a local chief accused of raping an underage girl in Ibeju-Lekki.

One morning in 2022, she got a leak on how police connived with the alleged rapist and forced his 17-year-old victim to accept wrongdoing for visiting the local chief in his house. Upon hearing this, Yemisi visited the victim’s family with the hope of giving voice to the helpless teenager. 

She meticulously researched and investigated the case for nearly two months. Interestingly, she was able to get evidence of a disturbing pattern of abuse and corruption within the community. She spoke with more victims and obtained an audio confession statement from the local chief. 

While she was unable to get justice for a series of sexual abuses she experienced in the university, Yemisi was convinced that her report would bring justice to the local chief’s victims and serve as a deterrent to others.

But when she submitted her story, she was met with resistance. 

“Immediately I submitted the report, my editor reached out saying, the alleged rapist was powerful and our report could spark major controversy in Ibeju-Lekki and its environs,” she said. “When I provided my editor with evidence, he was very happy and eager to publish. He did his independent investigations and discovered that my story was factual. So, he published.” 

Minutes after the report was published, Yemisi got a call from her editor, informing her that the newspaper’s publisher had ordered them to pull down the story. 

“The publisher claimed that the story was too sensitive. He explained that his newspaper was not launched to police people, and I should allow police to do their jobs. What surprised me was that I was transferred from the metro desk to the entertainment beat on that same day,” Yemisi said. 

She added that the decision to kill the story was a crushing blow to her. In fact, she was torn between her professional obligations as a journalist and the weight of silence. The incident affected her mentally, and she was forced to resign a month later. 

Though she now works as a human resource manager, she still feels guilty for “not telling an important story despite evidence. I still feel like I betrayed the victim and the community.” 

Commercial interest over journalistic integrity?

Yemisi told HumAngle that she believed her newsroom sacrificed journalistic integrity for commercial interests.  “It was after I left the newspaper that I discovered that we usually take land advertisements from local chiefs in Ibeju-Lekki, and publishing the story would have cost us millions of naira. I was pained; why was I investigating the story if it wasn’t going to see the light of day?” 

Yemisi’s experience is not isolated. In fact, she’s not the only journalist to quit working under the constraints that stifled their abilities to report freely.

Another journalist who spoke under anonymity said, “My story was once altered by my editor without my consent after publishing. In fact, it was entirely rewritten, so I had to doubt the content. I had to inform them to remove my byline. Months later, I saw the advertisement of the fellow we reported on on my company’s website.” 

Many journalists in Nigeria face similar challenges, from economic coercion to intimidation. Even when publishers agree that a free press is a fundamental pillar of democratic governance, a lack of independent sustainability suppresses critical reporting and undermines public trust.

“Many media organisations struggle to sustain themselves financially. So, it’s even difficult to get necessary insurance for their reporters. People just want to report issues that are not likely to put them into trouble or court cases where all their revenues are seized,” the journalist added.

HumAngle also learnt that “many media executives are thinking more as businessmen than they see themselves as journalists. They just want to ensure that their businesses are protected regardless of whatever stories they are telling. Hence, they will jettison any story for their platform to make money.”

Self-censorship

While Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 10 of the Human Rights Act, and Section 39 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria guarantee the right to freedom of expression, the press, and the right to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority, these legal frameworks have not sufficiently protected journalists. 

There have been a series of attempts by the Nigerian government, powerful elites, and security agents to gag the press through controversial legislations and strategic lawsuits against public participation to censor and intimidate the press. Though media rights organisations have consistently challenged all of these, one often neglected discussion is internal censorship.

Today, there are over 100 newspapers in Nigeria. But only a few engage in critical investigations that hold power to account. Some newsrooms censor their reporters because of the fear of perceived conflicts of interest with funders, advertisers and influential individuals capable of suppressing them. Also, journalists sometimes self-censor their publications out of concern for the safety of people involved. 

“I feel journalists not only self-censor themselves because of revenue or bias, it sometimes happens because of the safety of people involved. I have interviewed sources for stories and at the point of publication, they asked me not to proceed,” said Olanrewaju Oyedeji, an investigative journalist based in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. 

Oyedeji, a recipient of the 2022 Wole Soyinka Awards for Investigative Reporting (WSAIR), added that “there are times you also consider personal safety as a journalist. In the organisation I have worked in the past, we do a lot of stories on corruption and you have to drop some investigations because of the risks involved, particularly when you receive life-threatening notes from parties involved.” 

Corroborating this, Ibrahim Adeyemi, HumAngle Media’s Investigations’ Lead, explained that he had let go of some stories in the past because of the safety of his sources.

“There was a time I was doing a story on how the Oyo Police Command is shortchanging officers in the state. I got sources who told me how they were being shortchanged and how some people in government were asking them to pay some bribes to be able to access their promotion letter for salary increment digitalisation. 

“I had contacted all necessary sources and written the story. In the process of contacting the authorities for reactions, my sources got threatened. The officer who initially gave me the story called me to back off, saying they knew he was the one talking to me. And because of that, we back off to protect the officer’s job,” Adeyemi explained. 

Speaking during a courtesy visit by the Media and Publicity Committee of the International Press Institute Congress 2018 to The Punch Place in Ogun State, ex-Director-General of the Nigerian Television Authority, Tonnie Iredia, said self-censorship is the bane of Nigerian media.

Digital manipulation

Aside from police intimidation and attempts by authorities to gag the press, many media practitioners in Nigeria are targeted with disinformation campaigns and harassment, especially on social media. In fact, women journalists are at particular risk of this menace, according to research by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

“…73 per cent of women journalists surveyed said they had been threatened, intimidated and insulted online in connection with their work. Often, the failure to investigate and address online attacks has real-life consequences for women journalists, affecting their mental and physical health. In some cases, online threats can escalate to physical violence and even murder, as the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in 2017 demonstrated,” UNESCO said. 

In Nigeria, several women journalists, including Kadaria Ahmed, a seasoned journalist and broadcaster, have come under heavy criticism for holding power to account. 

Similarly, HumAngle Media Founder, Ahmad Salkida, was on several occasions attacked on social media for his reporting on Boko Haram crisis in northeastern Nigeria in the early days of the insurgency, as online spaces breed grounds for misinformation and hate speech against journalists, exacerbating existing tensions in the newsroom and undermining public trust in the media. 

To save the press, policymakers, media organisations’ executives, and the public must unite in defence of fundamental human rights.

“The safety of journalists is important to democracy, and everyone must come together to discuss solutions to unseen forces stifling press freedom in Nigeria. Good governance begins with accountability, and that must be ensured by the necessary people involved,” said Olusola Oludiran, a staff member of the International Press Centre (IPC). 

Olusola added that journalists in Nigeria under-report the harassment they receive because many are within and before stories are published. 

“The data boys and girls working for politicians on social media must understand that democracy depends on a free press and should stop harassing journalists who try to checkmate their political godfathers. Citizens shouldn’t hinder the free press. Instead, we should all support credible media outlets and challenge the spread of misinformation and lazy journalism,” he told HumAngle. 

“Those who attack journalists should be made to pay for their actions, and media sustainability should not deter the press from playing its role as watchdog. On the part of media practitioners, journalists should arm themselves with the necessary laws that protect them, be accountable, transparent, and ethical.”

*Yemisi Adeoye is a pseudonym we have used to protect the journalist’s identity.

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.