Growing attacks against the media and journalists are affecting democracy and anti-corruption efforts across Africa, with recent military coups exacerbating the situation.
Media and civil society experts shared their insights on these challenges on 19 June during a panel at the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Umaru Pate, a Nigerian professor of media history, highlighted that journalists engaged in investigative reporting are being targeted or compromised by authorities.
“The media as an institution is experiencing serious challenges because of funding, digital evolution, credibility, and safety issues,” Pate said. “There are also problems related to ownership because, in some cases, those who are seen as corrupt or have relationships with the government own the media and control their operations directly or indirectly.”
Pate emphasised that the freedom and safety of journalists reporting on corruption are at risk, explaining that journalists are becoming victims instead of heroes, with nobody defending them.
“There are conditions in terms of their psychological safety, physical safety, economic safety, social safety, political safety, legal safety, and even online safety,” he said.
“When an individual is not safe, and feels that the system is not safe enough, or it is compromised, he becomes weak or fearful to operate within the system because of the powerful forces. Corruption is always fighting back,” added Pate.
Systemic and structural corruption is endemic in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, affecting the performance of democracy in the region.
Corruption is widespread in Nigeria, especially among government circles. Successive governments have introduced various reforms to tackle corruption, but these efforts have yielded little results. Nigeria scored 25 out of 100 points and ranked 145 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index.
The 2023 ranking was the first for Nigeria under the presidency of Bola Tinubu, who was elected after a highly competitive election in March 2023.
“In a very wide sense, if you take Nigeria for example, there are some very serious threats that you can identify, which have undermined the performance and operations of our democratic systems and institutions,” Pate said.
He identified conflicts, economic challenges, and weak institutions as issues affecting the performance of the media and democracy.
“Conflicts are increasingly a major part of Nigeria, and these conflicts are mostly resource-based and highly sponsored by some hidden forces,” he said.
“In Nigeria, you have constitutional immunity for certain public officials. You can do all the reporting as a journalist or media outlet and nothing will happen or come out of it. We have seen a number of stories that came out, but nobody took any action,” he said.
Pate added that due to the structural elements within the system, the media has a huge amount of work to do to tackle the forces of corruption both nationally and internationally.
Lola Adekanye, programme director for Africa at the Centre for International Private Enterprise, said media groups and civil societies need to build coalitions to advocate for and protect journalists reporting on corruption.
“Coalition is important because the weakness of institutions puts journalists at risk,” she said. “But journalists are also getting innovative around how to address some of these challenges.”
