The Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) is a network of media professionals established to advance the safety and welfare of Nigerian journalists. It is an independent trade organization with no political leaning or ideological disposition.
Since the establishment of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ in 1955, it has gone through many phases to its present state. For seven decades, the NUJ has played vital roles in shaping the country’s media landscape, promoting press freedom and advocating for the rights of members. Comrade Alhasan Yahya Abdullahi, the new NUJ President, has the honour of holding the helm at this juncture of the Union’s history. The Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, marked its 70th birthday anniversary on March 15th, 2025.
NUJ's Founding and Early Years
NUJ was founded on 15 March 1955 in Lagos during Nigeria's struggle for independence from British rule. NUJ is one of the many groups that were founded to champion the struggle for Nigeria Independence in 1960. It is affiliated to the Nigeria Labour Congress.
Although the many of the earlier members were not media professional, this is evidence as one of the founding fathers of the Union, late Chief Olu Oyesanya who spearheaded its formation was then an Information Officer in the Department of Information under the colonial Government (NUJ, 2017). Meanwhile, when the Union held his second meeting some officers were elected to ship the Union and give the Union the needed impetus to achieve success particularly after the constitution of the Union had been ratified. The two main principal officers that were elected were the late Mobolaji Odunewu as the first Nigerian Chief Information Officer as the President and late Chief Olu Oyesanya as the Union Secretary.
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Since then, the Union has continued to move from one stage of struggle to the other (NUJ, 2017). The expansion of the union from then became rapid as more states were created. There was awareness among members so much that where ever they found themselves, they will quickly organize themselves to form a council of the union. By 1966, there were 12 state councils.
Structure and Organization
The union now operates 37 state councils, each headed by a Chairman, Secretary and other officials, six zones, each headed by a Vice President and Zonal Secretary 740 chapels (in house unions in media organizations) and has affiliate bodies like Nigeria Association of Women Journalists (NAWOJ), Nigerian Guild of Editors and the Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN). The National Secretariat of the union is located in Abuja. The official NUJ National Secretariat is at Plot 131, Cadastral Zone, Sector Center A, Jahi District, off Mabushi Ultra Modern Market Road, near Father’s church, before Next Cash & Carry Abuja. Nigeria.
Before the 1977 amendments and the appointment of fulltime national secretary, the union operated a mobile secretariat whereby the secretariat was located where the Secretary resided. Today, the NUJ apart from serving as the Trade Union for journalist and other media practitioners, it has also afforded journalists to push forward some demand often from the government should as joining hands with other stakeholders in seeking freedom of information. The mission and vision statement is that journalism entails a high degree of public trust.
NUJ's Role in Protecting Journalists
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NUJ has consistently demonstrated courage and resilience in the face of adversity as it navigates the complexities of Nigeria’s evolving media environment under successive governments. The union fought big battles promoting the rights of its members for living wages, safe working conditions and protection from harassment and intimidation.
The NUJ has also led journalists through difficult periods in the country’s history, fighting for media independence as military governments dished out draconian decrees like the Decree 4 of 1984, the Treason and Treasonable Offences Decree No. 29 of 1993, among others. Under Decree 4, two journalists - Tunde Thompson and Nduka Irabor - were sent to prison.
Challenges to Press Freedom
Like much of the country, the press was caught up in an often-turbulent national debate last year over the adoption of an Islamic legal system, known as sharia, by nine Nigerian states. Ahmed Sani, governor of Zamfara State, charged that Nigerian press coverage of the issue showed that local journalists were a “force of destruction” bent on “pitting citizens against one another.” Sani had earlier ordered the official Zamfara State Radio not to air anti-sharia news items.
A former Nigerian ruler, Alhaji Shehu Aliyu Shagari, also accused the media of instigating so-called sharia riots between Muslims and non-Muslims, during which hundreds of people died. Speaking to reporters in early July, Shagari said, “You people simply want to sell your papers and so you come up with all sorts of sensational headlines." Yet Nigerian journalists had good reason to be concerned by the prospect of working under Islamic law. In the Nigerian version of sharia, for example, reporters found guilty of publishing offensive stories could receive 60 strokes of a cane at a public forum that would be witnessed by their editors and covered by the print and electronic media.
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In October, a sharia court in Zamfara State began hearing its first press case. Press freedom also suffered in regions where secessionist movements are active. In the former Biafra, for instance, where the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) is fighting for independence from the federal government, police arrested Corlinius Igbokwe, editor of the monthly magazine The Globe, and held him for five days.
Regulatory Issues and Controversies
The Nigerian Press Council (Amendment) Decree No. 60, issued in 1999, established a regulatory office staffed by journalists who are paid by the government to enforce professional ethics. Predictably, the Press Council has itself become a subject of heated controversy, with most journalists describing it as a vehicle of censorship. The Press Council is empowered to accredit and register journalists, and can suspend journalists from practicing their profession. All Nigerian publications must register annually with the council, which imposes fines of US$2500 or up to three years in jail for publishing without a license.
In November, a meeting of Nigerian professional media groups in Abuja issued a manifesto demanding a single law for print and broadcast media that would make defamation a civil, rather than criminal, offense and protect reporters against compulsory disclosure of their sources. At year’s end, hopes ran high that the Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (HRVIC), set up in June 1999 by President Obasanjo, would open up Nigeria’s traumatic history of military dictatorships for objective scrutiny, along the lines of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. One case on the Commission’s current agenda is the 1986 parcel bomb killing of investigative journalist Dele Giwa. Lawyers for Giwa’s family have blamed Gen.
Nigerian journalists also urged the commission to look into the still-unresolved 1996 disappearances of Bagauda Kaltho, Kaduna correspondent for The News, and Chinedu Offoaro, a reporter for The Guardian.
Instances of Harassment and Assault on Journalists
Angry inhabitants of Adeje, a small village near the town of Warri in Nigeria’s Delta state, chased reporter Enahoro into the bush where he spent the night. He was declared missing by his employer until he showed up unharmed two days later. More than 50 Nigerian police stormed the International Press Centre (IPC) in Lagos and arrested several people, including four journalists from independent newspapers: Adeoye and Aremu of Punch, Nwafor of The News, and Otufodunrin of Journalist for Christ. According to local journalists, the police raid was aimed at rounding up suspected terrorists whom the police believed to be attending a press conference in the IPC’s hall (which is regularly hired out on a commercial basis).
Ogbole, a reporter with Radio Benue in Benue state, was assaulted, arrested, and detained by local police. Ogbole, producer of Radio Benue’s weekly personalities program “View Point,” had invited the Benue state police commissioner, Sunday Aghedo, to appear on the show. Apparently, police public relations officer Ike Nwosu also wanted to be interviewed. Plainclothes detectives arrested Adeyi, assistant editor and Jos City bureau chief of the independent weekly magazine TELL, at his office in Jos, the capital of Plateau state. He was taken to the local Criminal Investigation Bureau and then moved to a detention facility in the state capital, Abuja. The arrest resulted from Adeyi’s interview with Senator Joseph Kennedy Waku in that week’s edition of TELL. The Senate subsequently suspended Waku pending an investigation by its disciplinary committee.
The state director of press affairs told Yakubu that the authorities were increasingly disturbed by his reporting style, according to CPJ sources. The director also warned the journalist to be more careful in the future and to stop “writing nonsense” if he wanted to live a long life. Olakunde Ojo, sales manager for the weekly magazine The News, and Anifowose, a driver employed by the magazine, were attacked in Kaduna, northwest Nigeria, by a group of Muslim activists who threw stones at their car. The attackers expressed vocal hostility towards the press, damaged the car, and stabbed Anifowose three times in the stomach.
Twelve armed security agents stormed the Ibadan headquarters of the African Newspapers of Nigeria, publishers of the Nigerian Tribune, and sealed off the entire company, interrupting production of the Tribune and other newspapers. According to some sources, the agents told company workers that the federal government had instructed them to ensure that the Tribune did not come out that day. Police charged the four journalists with seditious libel capable of causing public unrest. They were denied bail during the investigation, according to CPJ sources in Nigeria.
Bayelsa state security forces raided newsstands in Yenegoa, the state’s capital, and seized copies of The Independent Monitor and Banner News. The raid came in response to a report that ran in both papers under the headline “134 Bayelsa, Rivers Indigenes Killed in Kaduna Sharia Riots.” Police asked Oyadongha to explain how he knew that those killed in the riots were natives of Bayelsa and Rivers states. The authorities later claimed that they wanted to question Obaigbena over an allegation that he had left unsettled hotel bills of nearly US$24,000 during a September 1999 IMF-World Bank meeting in Washington, D.C. Obaigbena told reporters that he had received several threatening phone calls prior to the raid, warning him against publishing stories implicating President Olesegun Obansanjo’s national security advisor, Aliyu Mohamed Gusau, in allegations of graft under the late dictator General Sani Abacha.
Three days after the raid, Obaigbena unexpectedly resigned from the paper. A gang of knife-wielding youths assaulted Amorighoye, a correspondent for the Lagos daily Vanguard, in the Niger Delta town of Warri. Three of Akwa Ibom state governor Victor Attah’s security guards assaulted Daniel and Etim, correspondents for the Lagos newspaper Punch. When Daniel and Etim arrived at the governor’s office, security men prevented them from entering the reception area, even though Daniel identified himself as an accredited reporter. When Daniel attempted to intervene, he sustained several blows to his body.
The two-man television crew was attacked while filming a spontaneous demonstration by a group of citizens protesting a recent fuel price hike. Eseni and Fatoye were later arrested and interrogated at the Wuse police station in Abuja. Ikwuwgbu, a reporter for the Lagos daily ThisDay, was assaulted and beaten by police officers while covering a fire that destroyed two warehouses belonging to the Lagos company Witt and Busch. When Ikwuwgbu asked police to brief him on the fire damage, they assaulted him, saying they did not want any reporters at the scene. Sources contacted by CPJ said that Komolafe, who has covered the Nigerian labor movement for decades, “would have been killed” had she not been rescued by people present at the scene.
The governor, whose statement was broadcast in the July 8 edition of “Hmsohi,” a talk show program of the Hausa-language service of the BBC, also said that he had ordered the official Zamfara State Radio not to air anti-sharia news items or comments. Onwuemeodo, the Port Harcourt correspondent for the Lagos independent daily Vanguard, was assaulted by Ogoni youths when two factions of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) clashed in the Niger Delta town of Bori. Angered that Onwuemeodo was attempting to photograph the mob violence, two youths assaulted the journalist and broke his camera.
Current Challenges and Future Directions
NUJ’s 70th anniversary comes at a time when technological innovations have disrupted the profession throughout the world. These changes, coupled with rising costs, have severely affected the media and threatened the welfare of journalists.
NUJ Seeks Protection Of Journalists To Sustain Democracy
We urge the NUJ to continue exploring opportunities for media and journalism survival. The Union must stay committed to holding members accountable, defending their welfare and upholding professionalism.
