Nigerian journalists not safe – IPI

Although Nigeria has a very lively news industry that enjoys a good degree of press freedom, safety has been a serious problem for journalists in the country.

The executive director of the International Press Institute, Barbara Trionfi, said this at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa in Abuja at the opening of IPI’s 67th World Conference on Thursday.

She said Nigerian journalists covering areas where insurgents were active as well as those reporting corruption had been targeted.

Trionfi said no fewer than 43 journalists had been killed so far in this year in Afghanistan, Mexico, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and others.

According to her, at present there is a sense that independent journalism is under attack and press freedom has been eroded all over the world.

She said: “From Mexico to the Philippines, from Zimbabwe to Turkey, from Russia to Ethiopia; journalists are being imprisoned. They are denied access to justice. They are threatened and insulted on social media.

“They are directly targeted and labeled as traitors and enemies of the state and they are killed, shot in front of their houses, on their way to work by killers who know that murdering journalists is the easiest way to silence them and ensure that the stories of corruption they were investigating, the wrongdoings they had uncovered will never be revealed.”