Last week, this column dwelt on the need for journalists in the country to dig deep into issues while processing them as news for the reading public. It is because Nigerians know very little about goings-on in government and what public officials are doing in their name. The fact that many Nigerians get to know what went wrong after the perpetrators have left office is a failure of investigative journalism in Nigeria. Suffice to say that investigative journalism is not event-oriented, unlike routine news reporting. Though an event could trigger the curiosity of the investigative journalist, he must go beyond the event. Reporting only the event and nothing more is what could be termed situation reporting. It goes beyond this. It calls for more details, more research, and more attention to processes, trends and context.
May I crave the reader’s indulgence to call up some personal examples to illustrate what I think good investigative journalism should entail. I wrote a story titled ‘The Axis of Evil’ which was published by Tell Magazine on August 25, 2003. The story chronicled the exploits of armed robbers, who usually invaded Nigeria from neighbouring countries, particularly the Republic of Benin and leave with a convoy of snatched cars across the border. I was able to uncover the methods used, the routes taken by the robbers each time they struck, the receivers of the stolen goods and all that. It was a diligent and painstaking reportorial work, which took me a long time and a lot of legwork through their routes which essentially constitute an axis of evil on the border between Nigeria and Benin Republic.
The second example is the story of late Hammani Tidjani, the notorious cross-border armed robber, who was finally arrested by the Nigerian security agencies on Friday, September 12, 2003. He was brought to Nigeria in handcuffs after many years of posing a security threat to the country through car snatching and smuggling them to neighbouring West African countries, including the Republic of Benin, Togo, Ghana, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali.
Mention must also be made of Anas Aremeyaw Anas, a Ghanaian undercover journalist and crime buster, who has continued to make investigative journalists proud of his exploits in crime reporting. He uncovered the racketeering in Cocoa export in Ghana by exposing those behind the illicit deals. He also unmasked those luring unsuspecting victims into buying fake gold in the country, the electricity thieves at the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG, and many others. Through his activities, the government and the security agencies were able to plug some loopholes in the system while the government made more money in revenue as cocoa smuggling was curtailed.
I must quickly add that investigative journalism, which is what following up on a routine story requires, does not come cheap. Media organisations need to spend money on investigative journalism for it to flourish. An investigative journalist may be on a story for months and may require thousands of naira for accommodation, transportation and what have you. It is a task that requires patience in order to get it right. You either get it right or get yourself into a mess.
The biggest motivation for being a journalist is the love and passion for the job. A poorly remunerated journalist might be an enemy to the society itself. He might become a watchdog that turns against its owner. There is no disputing the fact that Nigerian journalists are easily among the worst paid in the world. If you doubt this, do a simple comparison of the pay structure of the Nigerian journalists with those of several other professionals like accountants and bankers, then, you will know what I am talking about.
In a society where only a few media organisations are truly doing well enough to pay their reporters well and timely, investigative journalists need be aware that sources of funding for their follow-up stories or 100 per cent fresh works do not have to be their employers alone. There are international organisations and foundations that support investigative works such as the International Investigative Journalism Centre. These organisations accept pitches from time to time from journalists working on investigative stories. Once your pitch is successful, you get a grant to do the work. Local organisations, such as the Wole Soyinka Investigative Journalism Centre, are also working along this line.
Funding is, however, not the only constraint to investigative journalism. Other factors such as proprietor’s interests and even a reporter’s personal relationship with a subject of investigation play a crucial part. Not a few media houses will bury a story in order to ensure that advert flow from a client does not stop. Many stories have died such unnatural deaths because of these reasons and the society is the worse for it.
I must also point out the fact that our laws are full of loopholes and do not encourage investigative journalism. There is so much secrecy in government that even with the Freedom of Information, FoI, Act, journalists still confront challenges in accessing government information because agents of government have found a way to beat the FoI. Be that as it may, a creative investigative journalist can still find a way around these bottlenecks and produce good investigative copies and save the society. While I will agree that, in Nigeria, as elsewhere around the globe, allegations of corruption are employed as ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in political warfare, the only way to separate genuine reports from fictional ones is to speedily investigate them.
As we all know, Nigerians don’t have the culture of public officials whose integrity has been badly impugned resigning their offices in order to defend themselves. Rather, they sit in judgment over their own trials. The unfortunate impression that has been created in the country through the years is that anyone who is politically connected enough can get away with just about anything. Let it be noted that Nigeria cannot attain the much-bandied greatness or perhaps, even survive, if criminality and corruption are not checked or reduced to the barest minimum. That is why we must all be committed to rolling back the tide of corruption.
The point should also be made that investigative journalism has not flourished in Nigeria as it should have been, perhaps, due to the ownership structure and control of the mass media in the country. In the 1970s, up to the early 1980s, government had an overwhelming influence in newspaper ownership while broadcasting, either through the radio or TV, was also monopolised by it. Now that there is deregulation in media business in Nigeria, those who own the media houses, whether businessmen, politicians, or even media professionals themselves, have allowed, in many cases, personal interests to override their news judgements. This, no doubt, constitutes a debilitating cog in the wheel of investigative journalism in the country. Added to this are laziness, corruption and lack of professional enterprise spirit in the average journalist.
Investigative journalism will continue to merely mark time if we do not ensure that there are guarantees for its survival, particularly through organisations lending relevant support to it, such as funding. We should always remember that in spite of the constitutional role placed on the members of the Fourth Estate of the Realm, there are institutional and other bottlenecks that we all must help overcome.
Let me sound a note of warning here. When we ask for accountability from politicians, banks, government agencies and others where economic crimes are rampant, it is because we recognise that men and women are capable of all manners of evil. So, we must be careful and creative in exposing them without being hurt in the process as evil men and women will not just fold their arms and watch you ruin them!
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