‘Like going to the war front’: Nigerian journalists offer tips for covering 2023 elections
In the early hours of February 1, unknown gunmen set fire to an office of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission and a police station in the country’s southeastern Anambra state. Days earlier, gunmen had attacked and killed soldiers and policemen at checkpoints along a road that connects nearby Enugu and Ebonyi states. The incidents underscored…
Nigerian military targeted journalists’ phones, computers with “forensic search” for sources
Hamza Idris, an editor with the Nigerian Daily Trust, was at the newspaper’s central office on January 6 when the military arrived looking for him. Soldiers with AK47s walked between the newsroom desks repeating his name, he told CPJ. It was the second raid on the paper that day; the first hit the bureau based…
‘You cannot muzzle the media’: Nigerian journalists on press freedom under Buhari
When Nigeria’s incumbent president Muhammadu Buhari won re-election this year, he campaigned (as he did in 2015) on an image of good governance and anti-corruption. Billboards in the capital, Abuja, bore the smiling faces of the president–who first led Nigeria as military ruler from 1983-1985–and his vice-president Yemi Osinbajo, and called for voters to let…