Last week, Nigerian journalism enjoyed a double-barrelled celebration of its past.
On Monday, marking 40 years of the assassination of Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of Newswatch magazine, key industry figures gathered in Lagos as NewsWatch launched a book, “Dele Giwa’s Granite Journalism,” in his honour.
That was followed on Thursday by the launch, by the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development, of ‘Ladbone: A Life in Print,’ honouring Mr Lade Bonuola, the former Managing Director of The Guardian, on his 80th birthday.
I join in celebrating both men, whom I am proud to say I met in their prime. Although I missed both events, I know that each event was very successful.
That is exactly how it should be: an industry’s icons receiving from their colleagues the recognition due to them.
While that will always matter, it is the past. That is, the present celebrating the past. Now what?
What will the future celebrate of the present, when—if we would admit the truth—our journalism is widely known to have taken a step back?
Things have certainly changed for the worse in Nigeria, and the quality of our journalism is implicated.
But there is a path back to those days when politicians respected journalists, media organisations paid good salaries, and print organisations were not ashamed of their circulation figures.
It begins with journalists refusing—as Messrs. Giwa and Bonuola would have done—to compromise the reporting of the forthcoming elections.
Earlier this year, I called on the mass media to recognise this moment and do the right thing. I now plead for collaboration in the coverage of the elections.
It is obvious that unlike the mass media in the heyday of Giwa and Bonuola, Nigerian outfits have shrunk in many respects. No organisation is in a position to cover Nigeria by means of its own resources alone.
Not if it intends to be honest or thorough or effective, anyway. Much of the country is insecure.
Infrastructure is worse than at any point in the Fourth Republic. Travel is expensive and sometimes dangerous.
That is a formula for professionalism to be compromised, and elections mismanaged or rigged.
To overcome those odds, journalism organisations should deploy a new playbook: collaboration.
There are precedents: In 2018, CrossCheck Nigeria came together to combat electoral disinformation.
In 2023, the Nigeria Fact-Checkers’ Coalition brought together 31 fact-checkers from over 12 media and civil society organisations and examined 127 claims within six days of the presidential and governorship elections.
In 2025, the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria Phase II announced “strategic engagement” with print media organisations to strengthen professionalism in the coverage of elections.
And the basic ideas are already on paper: A recent roundtable endorsed a BON proposal for a shared pool of election photographs and footage, and called for insurance cover for journalists, technical staff and equipment. A separate media and civil society roundtable proposed a joint fact-checking platform.
What would serve us best is a chartered Election Integrity Newsroom: a standing joint desk with a small secretariat, hosted by a neutral body rather than any one newsroom.
Member outlets across the 36 states and the FCT would feed the hub, which would verify, standardise, and redistribute content under a shared “verified by the consortium” label.
The charter would establish integrity safeguards concerning membership, verification, independent review, and languages.
Given time constraints, this may be too challenging an arrangement to pull off. A more feasible structure would deploy a system of Lead-outlet investigative baskets.
This might involve three or four small task alliances, each led by one strong investigative outlet and including partner newsrooms, a university technology department and a CSO.
The following baskets might be used:
- Election Technology Watch. BVAS, results transmission architecture, server redundancy, network coverage and contingency protocols, with university departments carrying out technical testing.
- Money and vote-buying. Tracking illicit money flows, vote-buying and campaign finance violations.
- Security and impunity tracker. Documenting election violence and impunity, and arranging safety protocols and insurance for reporters.
- INEC scorecard. Converting the commitments in the INEC Strategic Plan 2022–2026 into a public monthly ledger showing what was promised, what was done, what is delayed and who is responsible.
The system would rest on a simultaneous publication rule by which every pod finding is released by all partners on the same day.
This would protect the lead outlet from retaliation and prevent any partner from sitting on or selling a story. It would also mean that one compromised member cannot suppress the work.
If the will is present, the Lead-outlet investigative baskets approach can commence immediately, producing output well before the first ballot. The limitation is that it covers only specific beats rather than the whole country. For that purpose, a national network would have to be designed.
If the media is energised by the popular desire for credible elections, this is the time to demonstrate it. Profit is important, but patriotism is even more so.
A system like this enhances media credibility across the political spectrum and would expose participating organisations locally and internationally. That is a currency they can translate into bigger profits later.
The business-as-usual approach would see everyone engage in outrage publishing should the elections go wrong.
My approach certainly has a weakness, which is joint legal exposure, as publication of allegations carries a defamation risk, but that would be addressed by participating organisations.
There is also the issue of convener credibility: while the Guild of Editors and the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria are the natural legitimising bodies, they should not host the secretariat. That is a function for which a non-newsroom body is better placed.
Concerning funding, it is important that donor funding be paired with a clear firewall between funders and editorial decisions. All sources must be published.
As I read it, there is some hesitation within international election monitoring bodies about the 2027 elections attributed to poor implementation of previous recommendations.
The European Union, for instance, has indicated that it will send only two to four experts. Where it had sent a delegation of 110 in 2023, it now says it will be going with a “citizen-led” observation of over 3,000 election observers and 774 long-term observers.
These challenges make the role of the local media even more important. Individual reporters, no matter how industrious, cannot cover a challenge of this magnitude, let alone bring to it the credibility required.
This being a period of celebrating the best of the Nigerian media, the kind of collaboration I suggest would be boosted by the involvement of some of the professional icons we saw at the two events of last week.
Keep in mind also that Mohammed Haruna, the INEC National Commissioner for Information and Voter Education, is one of Nigeria’s most brilliant and experienced journalists. Because of his commitment to journalism, he is key to making the elections work for the mass media if he presents a solid plan.
Such a prospect would galvanise respectable media figures to deploy their credibility and experience to ensure the delivery of elections we can all be proud of.
Only then can the future celebrate today.