When the Watchdog Trembles: Power, Impunity, and the Fragile Fourth Estate
By Haroon Aremu
In contemporary Nigeria, our institutions no longer merely function; they clash. Airports have morphed into stages for high-stakes confrontation. Courtrooms echo with allegations long before facts can settle. Invitations from security agencies carry the weight of threats, and denials arrive with more speed than documentation.
Power today flexes in the daylight and negotiates in the shadows. Yet, amid the cacophony of arrests, defections, and counter-accusations, one institution stands strangely vulnerable. It is not silenced, but it is pressured. It is not abolished, but it is being systematically weakened. History warns us of the consequence: when the Fourth Estate falls silent, power grows teeth.
Nigeria is currently a nation in a state of restless friction. Lawmakers quarrel while citizens scroll through headlines in a daze. Security agencies deny, confirm, and redefine reality within the span of a single afternoon. In this storm of political brinkmanship, a haunting question remains: Who is watching the watchers?
To understand the crisis, we must understand how we got here. Societies once believed that concentrating power in a single hand was efficient. Kings ruled, and obedience followed. But history—written in the blood of rebellions and the debris of broken nations—taught us a harsher lesson: unchecked power inevitably mutates into oppression.
To preserve freedom, authority had to be fractured. Thus emerged the “Triad of Governance”: the Executive: Created to act—swiftly, decisively, and sometimes ruthlessly; the Legislature: Born to question and represent—to slow the rush of power; the Judiciary: The constitutional interpreter, expected to rise above the fray.
Yet, even this calculated balance has a quiet flaw: power can collaborate just as easily as it can conflict. Executives pressure courts; legislatures align with presidents; judges depend on the very state they are meant to restrain. It was out of this necessity that history produced its most uncomfortable invention: the Fourth Estate of the Realm.
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The term traces back to 18th-century Britain, where Edmund Burke reportedly observed that while Parliament had three estates, the press in the reporters’ gallery wielded more influence than them all. The press did not govern, legislate, or judge. Instead, it revealed, documented, and exposed. It turned whispers into headlines and secrecy into a liability.
In Nigeria, the press was never a passive observer; it was born in the fires of resistance. From colonial-era editors challenging imperial authority to the brave journalists who confronted military dictatorships, the Nigerian media helped midwife the democracy we inhabit today. They were detained, their houses were sealed, and their presses were confiscated—yet they endured.
The Modern Erosion
It is painfully ironic, then, that in our current democratic era, the media survives under a different kind of strangulation. Today, journalists face the blunt instrument of cybercrime charges. Media houses battle economic exhaustion. Investigative reporting is applauded in public but fiercely resisted in private.
The weakening of the watchdog is not an accident; it is structural. Digital platforms strip the value from journalism without sustaining it, and when journalism becomes financially vulnerable, it becomes politically fragile. We are moving toward a dangerous threshold where the media is dismissed as mere “noise” rather than an equal estate of power.
A democracy rarely collapses in a single night. It erodes gradually—when questions become risky, when transparency becomes optional, and when accountability becomes negotiable.
We must realize that press freedom is not a special privilege for journalists; it is the ultimate insurance policy for the citizen.
A media that cannot investigate cannot warn. A press that cannot survive cannot challenge. A Fourth Estate that is ignored leaves the other three unmonitored.
History is uncompromising on this point: power cannot be trusted to police itself. When the watchdog is muzzled, corruption grows confident. When scrutiny weakens, impunity strengthens.
Nigeria does not necessarily need louder institutions or more aggressive enforcement; it needs a freer, more resilient Fourth Estate. Nations do not fall because power is strong; they fall when there is no one left with the courage—or the means—to question it.
Haroon Aremu Abiodun is a Nigerian writer and can be reached via [email protected].
