Role of the Media in Curbing Corruption

No doubt, the Media has a vital role to play in checking the vices that have become impediments to societal growth. Unfortunately, journalists are also endangered everyday as they go about discharging their responsibilities. In an attempt to help them do the jobs without fear or favour, a three day workshop themed “Reporting Corruption” was recently organised in Abuja by Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in conjunction with the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) and Transparency International (Nigeria) for selected journalists across Nigeria ahead of the 2021 edition of the International Day of Anti-Corruption. Funke Olaode was among the participants

Reporting corruption in Nigeria has been a herculean task simply because reporters have to look for it and authenticate whether it is truly corruption. Often, investigative reporters are confronted with many challenges such as non-availability of data, threat to life and government policies hidden under the law. And unless journalists do their work diligently, their reports on corruption could easily be dismissed as fake news which could make journalists lose their credibility.

These were some of the concerns of the organisers of a three-day workshop in Abuja last week, where Journalists were exposed to the nitty-gritty of intellectual tools needed to report corruption. The theme of the workshop was “Reporting Corruption” and it all cantered on how Journalists can discharge their duties without fear or favour.

It was organised for selected journalists drawn from print, broadcast and online media across Nigeria ahead of the International Day of Anti-Corruption which falls on Thursday December 9th. Apart from journalists at the three day extensive training, various speakers from civil society organizations including Executive Director, CISLAC, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, Resident Representative of KAS, Dr. Vladimir Kreck, Programme Manager, Samson Adeniran, Regional Advisor for Africa Transparency International, Samuel Kaninda, Samuel Asimi of CISLAC, members of the academic community and editors from media outfits, were on ground to delve into the issues at hand.

In his opening remarks via zoom, Kreck commended CISLAC and Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung for capacity building for journalists in fighting corruption. According to Kreck, the importance of journalists, whom he considered strong allies in any society, cannot be overemphasized.

Kreck said: “We are relying on journalists to help us drive the vision of the foundation to help us expose ills in the society. Nigeria is the most populous and power house on the continent of Africa and once Nigeria gets it right it affects the entire continent positively.”

Charging journalists to leave up to expectation in discharging their duties, Kreck stressed that it was important to rely on investigative reports for recommendations, investigations, law enforcement reforms etc. as it leads to action to be taken against any corrupt society.

He noted that the role of journalists was key as citizens demand accountability on how their resources are being used.
On why journalists should be well equipped in his corruption reporting trajectory, he said because those involved are very smart and not only that, exposing them could be harmful and that is why journalists must know all the rules while investigating corruption cases without endangering their lives.

Kreck concluded. “We need you as allies, champions of integrity. We will continue to work with CISLAC as our partner in Nigeria as we believe constant training like this will eliminate corruption in Nigeria so that we can collectively create the Africa that we want not for us but for the future generation.”

Rafsanjani said the training on how to report crime and corruption as media practitioners in Nigeria became imperative as a watchdog of society. CISLAC boss said the Pandora papers recently showed transactions of resources (offshore) amongst politicians which affect our collective being as Nigerian citizens.

“Nigeria loses N18 billion annually to illicit financial flow. While international crimes make headlines, local crimes don’t.” He implored the media to help blow this up. “Working with you will bring a fresh angle to corruption going on. The media has a responsibility as it is enshrined in the constitution as the fourth estate of the realm. With our collective responsibility the society will shine because you are our heroes,” he said.

In his paper titled “History of Corruption and Its Effects on National Development”, a lawyer and Historian from Faculty of Arts, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Dr. Adetunji Ogunyemi gave an insight into the origin of corruption in Nigeria, the dimensions of corrupt behaviours in Nigeria’s public sector and highlighted the effects of corruption of the development trajectory in Nigeria.

Noting that it is not always easy to define corruption, Ogunyemi said Nigeria’s Criminal code and the criminal procedure Act, both of which prohibit and seek to punish corruption, have failed to define it. On his paper “ The Nexus between corruption and politics in Nigeria: Anti-corruption, law enforcement and security, Samuel Asimi of CISLAC delved into how internal enemies within had collaborated with outside enemies to rob the country of its hard earned money through various dubious contract citing P&ID case as an example.
For Asimi, paying lip service will not do the country any good but the only way out is to embark on political reforms, presence of frameworks and systems to checkmate corruption, strengthening of whistleblowing acts and international cooperation.

Corruption cuts across be it in public and private sectors as observed in the paper by Isaiah Yusuf on “Corruption in Public Procument in the Civil Service: Recommendations for improvement”. Yusuf enumerated key problems identified by the World Bank which included lack of competition and transparency in project procurement leading to high cost of projects and loss of confidence in government by the public, lack of standard bidding documents etc. All these he noted must be checked to ensure transparency in order to build confidence in the public.

On how electoral fraud undermines leadership recruitment in Nigeria in a paper delivered by the executive director of OJA Development Consult, Jide Ojo, which objective is to improve the knowledge, skills and attitude of the participants on challenges of leadership recruitment in Nigeria, Ojo gave insight into different stages of electoral process in Nigeria.

He focused his discourse on electoral fraud in Nigeria, which he said could take place in the three phases of the election value chain such, registration, voting and post-election phase which is declaration of winners.

While reporting corruption is like going to war in Nigeria as data are not readily available, Editor, International Centre for Investigative journalism (ICIR), Ajibola Amzat in his paper, (OSINT) Open Source Intelligence stressed that journalism “is a discipline for verification with purpose of uncovering abuse of power in the service of public interest.

Amzat said: “it is a process that involves research which means the journalist needs to collect, combine and verify hard pieces of evidence. This may come in various forms such as oral, documentary, digital, forensic and observatory.”

He added that publicly available sources which can be physical or digital – newspapers, websites or social platforms – can help greatly. “Search engine such as Wikipedia (for background check), Google, public record such as EFCC, Asset Recovery DataBase, Gazzete Africa are all tools that can help journalists while reporting corruption,” Amzat said.

Corroborating Amzat, Managing Editor, Premium Newspapers, Idris Akinbajo, in his paper on Security and Safety for journalists reporting corruption, noted that like reporting all matters, journalists can choose to report corruption using any of the four journalistic roles such as disseminator, mobiliser, adversarial and watchdog function.

While journalists are faced with various challenges on daily basis such as phishing, psycho-social, denial in case of sources, trauma as one can be traumatized being exposed to events such as violence, unusual death or threat which causes overwhelming feelings of helplessness while reporting corruption, Akinbajo still believes that being professional, true to oneself, keeping records and being independent will play a major role in discharging one’s role without fear of favour if given necessary support.
Without doubt, the training was impactful and insightful as it was brought to a close with a closing remarks by the Programme Manager, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Samson Adeniran, who enjoined participants to disseminate what they had learnt during the 3-day workshop as “it is a collective responsibility to stamp out corruption out of Nigeria.”