-By Daniel Adugbo
Today, crude oil production and export still plays a dominant role in Nigeria’s economy and accounts for around 80 per cent of government revenues and 95 per cent of foreign exchange earnings. Despite its potential, oil wealth in Nigeria has not translated into national development or rescued the country from the syndrome of resource curse.
Lack of transparency and the absence of reliable oil sector information, weak relations between the state and civil society, and a deeply embedded culture of corruption have been the bane of the sector for decades.
One institution that has been fingered to have failed in its role of bridging the information gap in the petroleum sector, championing citizen’s mobilization and participation, holding government and stakeholders accountable, is the media.
The verdict on the performance of the media in the coverage of Nigeria’s petroleum industry at least since independence till date can be said to be contentious.
Some school of thought advance that the media coverage of the petroleum sector so far has been pedestrian and uncritical while others think the Industry is more covered by the media today than decades ago.
A deep dive into the historical developments of the oil sector vis-a-vis the media and its qcoverage of the industry, may provide some insight into the current landscape of media reportage of the petroleum sector in Nigeria.
Several themes have dominated the Nigerian media in the different stages of the development of the petroleum sector in Nigeria.
Based on exhaustive research of political and economic developments in Nigeria carried out in this Special edition of Valuechain, it is safe to trace the coverage of the oil sector beginning from the 1960s when the discovery of oil in Nigeria was made. Although the advent of the oil industry can be traced back to 1908, these pioneering efforts ended abruptly with the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
Oil prospecting efforts resumed in 1937, when Shell D’Arcy (the forerunner of Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria) was awarded the sole concessionary rights covering the whole territory of Nigeria, however, their activities were again interrupted by the Second World War. Concerted efforts after several years, led to the first commercial discovery in 1956 at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta.
Just like the industry in Nigeria was going through some evolution at this time so also the media witnessed epoch making transformation. Prior to first commercial oil discovery in 1956 in the country, the media that existed were mostly deployed by their founders in pursuit of political interests and the need to rally the people against colonial authorities.
Starting with the Lagos Daily News, the first daily newspaper in British West Africa which was acquired by Herbert Macaulay and John Akilade Caulcrick in 1927; the Daily Times, founded in 1925 by Adeyemo Alakija and Richard Barrow; Nnamdi Azikiwe’s West African Pilot, founded in 1937; Nigerian Tribune, Daily Sketch and then the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service (WNBS) in 1959, all these media helped fan the embers of nationalism in the Nigerian elite, who were opposed to British colonial rule.
The first commercial discovery in 1956 at Oloibiri in the Niger Delta, opened up the oil industry, bringing in Mobil, Agip, Safrap (changed to Elf), Tenneco and Amoseas (Texaco and Chevron respectively) to join the exploration efforts both in the onshore and offshore areas of Nigeria. This development was enhanced by the extension of the concessionary rights previously a monopoly of Shell, to other newcomers. Actual oil production and export from the Oloibiri field commenced in 1958 with an initial production rate of 5,100 barrels of crude oil per day. Subsequently, the quantity doubled the following year and progressively as more players came onto the oil scene, the production rose to 2.0 million barrels per day (bpd) in 1972 and a peaking at 2.4 million bpd in 1979.
Nigeria thereafter, attained the status of a major oil producer, ranking 7th in the world in 1972, and then grew to become the sixth largest oil producing country in the world. Nigeria as well joined the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1971 and established the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) in 1977. Consequently, only pieces of information such as the ones mentioned earlier managed to find their way in media coverage.
Coverage by the media of developments in the oil industry between the 60s and 80s were thus overshadowed by the Nigerian civil war and intermittent military coups that started in 1966, a development that also impacted the Nigerian media landscape which changed as a result of military decrees and restrictions. This period witnessed emergence of titles like The Guardian in 1983, the birth of Vanguard and Newswatch weekly news magazine so also trial of two Nigerian journalists, Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor and the assassination of one of Nigeria’s prominent journalist – Dele Giwa. Notwithstanding, the media was still able to capture the oil boom in the 1970s that was triggered by an outstanding structural change in the economy at the end of the 1967-70 civil war.
The 1990s saw the emergence of another hue of vibrant journalism similar to the brand of journalism that existed under the colonial government, as weekly news titles such as Tell, TheNews and Tempo revved up advocacy and investigative journalism, which uncovered the ills of the military governments of Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha.
The liberalisation of the electronic media space following the promulgation of Decree 32 of 1992, gave private individuals access to own electronic media stations. The likes of Raypower Radio and African Independent Television, as well as Minaj Systems Radio and Minaj Broadcast International came on stream.
The return of democracy in 1999 saw the lifting of press censorship. This period heralded the proliferation of the print media, and prominent news outfit. The crux of reportage of the petroleum sector since the return to democractic rule have been largely around widespread corruption, opacity in the award of oil licences, a lack of transparency and the absence of reliable oil sector information, as well as a deeply embedded culture of malpractice.
Some researchers postulate that the decade following the return of democracy saw a decline in the vibrancy and quality of output of the media as rapid proliferation of media houses and online/social media news continued. The decline in quality has largely also affected the quality of petroleum sector coverage.
Overall, the Nigerian media coverage of the sector and reforms thereof, are said to be poor and contributed minimally to entrenching transparency and accountability in the oil and gas sector. The media have severally been accused of looking the other way while corruption and poor management of oil revenues endured.
Hamzat Ajibola in an opinion piece written in The Guardian in 2015, concluded that the media coverage of the petroleum industry has done little to pressure the Nigerian government and industry players to demonstrate greater transparency and accountability.
Advancing two reasons for the pedestrian and uncritical reporting of the oil and gas industry in Nigeria, Ajibola wrote that the more observable one is the complicity of Nigerian journalists in the corruption that has become the signature of the sector explaining that the beat journalists in the oil sector routinely censor themselves because of the generous gratification that comes with covering the sector.
On the other hand, according to him, the industry represented by government agencies and oil companies, put pressure on media owners or journalists in many ways to shape and control the character of news stories published about them. In many instances, government agencies and private companies deliberately refuse to give journalists information.
While this factor, though significantly, affected the standard of the news coverage of the petroleum industry, it is glaring that the expertise required to effectively report the sector is also lacking among the Nigerian journalists. The oil and gas sector is highly technical and those who should report about it must have the required skills. Not many media organizations in the country have the resources to fund such capacity training.
Other issues that have constrained accurate and reliable coverage of the petroleum sector is the fact the environment make it practically impossible for them to survive: The lack of adequate capital; a poorly developed media market arising from the high level of illiteracy and widespread poverty; poor economic conditions of media establishments in the face of high production cost; and inadequate legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks for media practice.
Opinions of industry practitioners about the role of media in petroleum industry reform and investment diverge and appear to be debateable. To Musa Bashir Usman who is the founder and Managing Director of Media Consultancy Company MDdotCom, publishers of Valuechain magazine, media reportage of the sector has improved over time.
He said: “Before now, most of the reporters of oil and gas activities were majorly reporters covering the Business Desk of the various media establishments in the country. You will agree with me that the oil and gas industry is one sector that not many people had an interest in the happenings in the past one or two decades. Except the players, not too many people fully understand the dynamics, the segmentation, the opportunities in the industry. All that people can relate with is Nigeria earns her income from oil, and our budget is pegged on the barrels of oil sold for foreign dollars. Apart from that a lot of people did not care about what is happening in that sector. And that could be attributed to, maybe, lack of sufficient news, reports, analysis that could elicit people’s interest in the sector. A large chunk of editorial space is devoted to politics at the expense of the economy. But in other climes, even economy reportage is subdivided into sub-sectors and subunits. That guarantees knowledge of every subsector of the economy, and it leads to the specialization of the analysts or reporters writing about the sector or industry. So I think the Industry is more covered today than decades ago, and the reason is we have more specialized writers in the industry that are dedicated to writing and educating the public about the Industry.“
For Omar Farouk Ibrahim, the current Secretary-General of the African Petroleum Producers’ Organization (APPO) and an experienced media personality, what has changed in media coverage of the petroleum industry in the last 20 years, is a reflection of the society in which it operates.
“Look back 20 or 30 or more years and ask yourself, has the society gotten better? If your answer is in the positive, then the media coverage will also be better. Likewise, if it has degenerated, you cannot expect the media to be different.”
Speaking further on the challenges facing the media, he said “I believe the biggest challenge is that today, you have a lot of new comers who are not willing to do due diligence on their reporting. We need to ask ourselves some fundamental questions before putting out a story: Is this report true? Did I ask the right questions from the right sources? Have I done my homework in preparing for interviews or stories? How knowledgeable am I on the issues I am reporting, commenting on, or analyzing?”
It is inexcusable for the media not to improve on its coverage. The positive takeaway is that more data are becoming available now than they were with the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). Civil Society Organizations and non-governmental organisations in Nigeria are going the extra mile to produce and publish relevant oil sector data on their websites. The international community have also been driving a new regime of transparency in national institutions by making data available in the public domain. NNPC, other government and private entities in the sector have started opening their books so also are new technologies making it possible for those data to be accessible.
Daniel Adugbo is a Media Consultant