CORRUPTION allegations have this month tarnished the image of Nigeria’s press, triggering self-doubt at the start of an election race in which it will play a major role.
Africa’s most populous country has what is normally seen as a vibrant independent media sector, including a dozen daily national newspapers.
Many titles won respect for making a courageous stand against former military regimes when some were forced into temporary closure and several journalists persecuted.
But as Nigeria prepares its first presidential election since the end of military rule in 1999, critics fear the press has fallen prey to the corruption that blights other areas of public life.
”Sadly, in the three years of the return of democratic rule, something the media championed even with the blood of its members, the ideals built over the last century are being destroyed,” assistant editor Dayo Aiyetan wrote in the weekly news magazine Tell.
”Politicians and political public office holders who continue to brazenly loot the national treasury have succeeded in corrupting members of the media in order to hide their skeletons.”
The latest bout of soul-searching was inspired by an article in the US news magazine Time describing how cash-stuffed envelopes are handed out to reporters at government press conferences.
The magazine singled out a meeting in Abuja after which members of the international press corps each found 50 000 naira ($430) tucked in folders of background material given to reporters.
The Information Ministry, which hosted the conference, denied that the cash amounted to a bribe intended to produce favourable coverage, insisting it was to reimburse travelling expenses.
After a brief investigation, the government cleared itself of wrongdoing and threatened to prosecute foreign reporters guilty of ”malicious falsehood”.
The Nigerian press took up the attack, accusing Time of hypocrisy and noting that Western journalists often receive free holidays, restaurant meals and theatre tickets from public relations firms.
One daily, This Day, also noted that when former US President Bill Clinton visited Nigeria, the 200 strong White House press corps was flown out to report on the visit.
But while they bridle at foreign criticism, privately Nigerian journalists admit there is a growing problem in a country where low and irregular salaries leave reporters prey to temptation.
The editor on one leading Lagos-based daily said that he would not be surprised if his Abuja reporter — whose travelling expenses would have been insignificant — had accepted the 50 000 naira, and nor would he have blamed him.
”Wages are very low, and some other papers have not managed to pay their staff for months. The industry has to try and develop itself economically before we can improve ethics,” he admitted.
In an editorial on the scandal the daily The Guardian insisted that Nigeria was no worse than many other countries for press corruption, but also noted the need to raise journalists’ salaries.
Tell magazine, however, painted a much more worrying picture. In what editor Dayo Aiyetan said was an investigation that had lasted several weeks, the magazine claimed to have evidence of widespread, systematic corruption among journalists.
It alleged that bribes went beyond occasional brown envelopes, and alleged that journalists and editors covering state politics had pocketed tens of thousands of dollars and had bought land.
Some state governors hold quarterly meetings with editors to pay them for favourable coverage, the magazine claimed, adding that the pay-offs are increasing as polling day approaches.
The ministries in the federal capital are also said to be a lucrative.
”The joke among journalists in Abuja is that if a reporter spends six months in the city and does not build a house, he deserves to be sacked,” the report claimed.
And the picture painted by Tell was not just of cash-strapped reporters accepting money from corrupt bureaucrats. Often, it claimed, syndicates of beat reporters covering subjects such as politics, crime or health gang up to blackmail personalities into making payments to avoid negative coverage. ? AFP
