Osoba, Ofeimun, Sulaiman lament lack of investigative journalism

The absence of investigative journalism has been blamed for the rising cases of corruption in the country in high and low places. This was the view of former Ogun State governor Chief Segun Osoba, a former minister in the past administration, Dr. Abubakar Sulaiman and prominent poet, Mr. Odia Ofeimun. They made the pronouncement last week in Lagos at the presentation of Ofeimun’s 42 books to the public.

Osoba said a vibrant investigative journalism was lacking in the country’s media that would have helped to expose and therefore stop corruption. According to him, “There is no more investigative journalism, nowadays if we hear a minister is corrupt we blow it up without proper and thorough investigation”.

Also, former Minister of National Planning Sulaiman stated, “As journalists, we must do some investigative journalism. Three months to my appointment as minister I remember having a strike against the former president’s government Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and he sent police to tear gas us. But the same man, after that, appointed me a minister. So as journalists, we must partake in investigative journalism when anything happens to put things in their proper perspective”.

The author of the books Ofeimun also harped on corruption and how investigative journalism could help nip it in the bud. He, however, said for anti-corruption crusade to work, those fighting it must also put themselves at its centre. Ofenium enjoined the media to partake in investigative journalism, noting, “I read the Nigerian newspaper as if I were reading a holy book because I want to know how my country is going, how the world works and the way our future would be protected by the kinds of things people write and say.

“We had a country in which one could brag that the civil service in Nigeria was incorruptible. You cannot fight corruption without putting yourself in the centre of it. One of the first things Murtala Muhammed did in his bid to fight corruption was to give back to the state what he had acquired unjustly. One can say that he would have given same opportunity to all other Nigerians to do the same, but he did not and, in my view, that was corruption. Muhaman Ghadaffi did the same; he simply gave a deadline and said if after that date people did not return what they had stolen they would be gunned down.

“However, in Nigeria we have an opportunity to do things right; we do not have to go hunting in order to kill corrupt people. I remember when the EFCC was being formed I told the friends who came to help Olusegun Obasanjo organize it to stop wanting the EFCC to be a prosecuting organization. Simply insist that at the end of every investigation every year they put a toll on the table of the National Assembly dictating the forms of corruption that took place in that particular year and empower every Nigerian citizen to sue anyone whose name appears on the list. If we did that today we would be fighting corruption. If we do not do that we are not yet fighting corruption”.