Martins Oloja is the Abuja Bureau Chief of the Guardian Newspapers. In this interview with Miriam Humbe, he opens up on a lot of issues including how the media can help in the fight against corruption in the country.
What educational qualifications prepared you for journalism practice?
I didn’t just jump into Journalism. I attended and graduated from the University of Lagos in 1986 where I read Mass Communications. Since that time, I have improved myself. I enrolled for a Post Graduate program in Leadership at the Rushmore University in United States. I am even now, I am a post graduate student of a British University. It is a very intensive course to seek knowledge beyond journalism.
What is the essence of media award to Journalists?
The Nigerian National Merit Award was instituted by a private organization in the early 1990s and they give awards to journalists that apply for them. I put in only twice in those days. I won two before coming over to The Guardian. I don’t put in for awards anymore. It was the first cover I did for The Source Magazine that was considered the best for Newspaper Reporter of the Year in 1997. It was Ernest Sisei Ikoli Newspaper Reporter of the Year for 1997 and another one for 1998. So it is one of the two recognized Media Merit Awards. You know there is Diamonds Publications Media Awards too. They always give the awards almost at the same time.
How will you assess the Nigerian news media within the context of the recent impasse over the fuel subsidy removal?
Definitely, within the limits of our resources and our capacity to cover Nigeria, I think we did quite well. But as a reporter, I know that we lack the capacity to report the oil and gas industry now. Unfortunately, most of the energy reporters that know the industry have joined the banking industry or the energy sector or the power sector. I have been following the sitting of the House of Representatives panel investigating the subsidy issue. Members asking the Minister of Petroleum Resources questions which should have been asked before by reporters covering the energy sector. There were specific questions about, for instance, who and who have been contractors in lifting crude oil, whether we have been exporting already subsidized products to some African countries and the criteria for the choice of contractors and if the process followed due process. Then they were asking questions about if PPPRA is the regulatory body that determines the level of subsidy for the independent marketers, they asked the petroleum minister; ‘since NNPC is also involved in this marketing, who determines the level of subsidy for NNPC and who pays NNPC and how is NNPC paid?’ They asked very relevant questions which should have been asked by the media. I listened to a lot of discussants on TV and radio; apart from a few economists, not many people have mentioned contemporary figures. Nobody has done any independent research on who does what and at how by how much.
Will you say the media is capable of effectively covering Nigeria?
At the moment, we lack the capacity to cover Nigeria, to cover business and economy, to cover politics, politicians and their activities. You can see this from what has come out of the strikes and protests, because the figures that we never asked for in the media have been coming out. And now, people will be following up from there. How did N300 billion rise to N1.3trillion? They are all explaining it. They have never told us about the subsidy on kerosene. It is the questions that are bringing up some answers, even some answers that by yesterday have not been given. People covering business and economy should not be going for functions and briefings by these chief executives, finance ministers and all these heads of agencies only. I specifically charge our colleagues covering business and economy desks and those who have the privilege of covering energy to do more. Journalism is about statistics and data.
The best part of modern journalism is quantitative analysis. Even opinion writing should be about statistics and data. It is about collection and analysis of data. Your stories will not be stories until you analyse them with data and then back ground.
How can the media be effective in the fight against corruption especially at the grassroots?
As I just said now, one of the issues that have come out from this just concluded strike is that we have not been covering all the 36 state governors in Nigeria. We have been focusing on the Presidency, the President, Federal Government and the National Assembly. We have forgotten that we have 36 State Assemblies that should also be working on the state finances by holding the governors to account. In our Constitution, the power of the purse lies with the legislature either in the state or in the federal legislature. The federal legislature derives its power from the Constitution. The state legislature derives its power from the same constitution. It is the same way they talk about the power of the Auditor General of the Federation that they talk about the Auditor General of the State, but we in the media have not been focusing on all the governors that come to take a lot of money from Abuja every month through the AGs and Finance Commissioners. Every month, they share money. The Federal Government will take its own, the states and local governments take their own. We don’t even cover the local governments at all. So we don’t have the capacity to cover Nigeria yet. I think as Nigeria is moving; as the young ones have demonstrated to us during this strike that they are now aware of what is happening and have woken up, it is time that we in the media too should wake up. Specifically, I want to appeal to proprietors and editorial managers that the idea of just giving awards to people we are covering is not very good. It doesn’t happen anywhere else in the world apart from Nigeria. Anywhere you find journalists giving awards to corrupt people, that country cannot move forward. Our own function is to report the system, to hold them accountable to the governed according to the Constitution. As the Constitution assigns duties to the executive, legislature and the judiciary, so does it to the news media. Section 22 of the Constitution gives the responsibility to hold the government to account to the media; to monitor governance. Now we have been strengthened with the Freedom of Information Act. We can ask questions, but we have left these governors alone. There are some former governors that, before they left office, enacted laws to give part of the state funds to themselves, build houses in Abuja and the state capitals for governors that were leaving office. We never covered these things.
Some governors used state funds to develop farms, some companies but on the verge of leaving office, they would convert these companies, transferring the ownership to themselves. Some governors stay in their own houses and pay rent to themselves as they determine the rent. They are there in Nigeria, but all these, because of our funding and capitalization problems, the state correspondents cannot cover these serious developments that have underdeveloped our economies.
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