How Journalists Can Help Tackle Defence Corruption – Experts

How Journalists Can Help Tackle Defence Corruption – Experts

It is trite to assert that corruption has permeated every aspect of the country’s life.

But the corrupt acts being perpetrated in the defence sector, fueling insecurity across the country, can be tackled if journalists covering the sector will be alive to their responsibility, experts have argued.

They spoke at a fellowship on “Corruption, Gender Sensitive Oversight and the Shrinking Civic Space in Nigeria’s Defence Sector”. The two-week fellowship was held in Jos, the Plateau State capital.

Organized by the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre, CISLAC, in collaboration with Transparency International (TI) and support from The Netherlands, the fellowship had five select journalists as participants.

It was coordinated by the Centre for Peace and Strategic Studies (CPSS) at the Modibbo Adama University, in Yola, Adamawa State.

In a paper titled, “Understanding Defence And Security Sector in Nigeria,” Prof. Jude Momodu, Director of the Modibbo Adama University Peace and Security Studies’ Centre, explained that the Nigerian security and defence sector plays an important role in the stability of the nation’s security, and the creation of a peaceful environment for sustainable development.

He however, decried the fraudulent acts perpetrated by government officials and top military officers in the sector.

All too often, the university don, noted that the activities and mandates of security providers and their management organisations remain topics that journalists and the media often fail to cover in a comprehensive way.

He said: “Acquiring good knowledge of concepts, actors and their roles in the security sector can strengthen journalists and media’s capacity to monitor and oversee the defence, law-enforcement and justice institutions – while also setting agenda for them and at the same time holding them to account for their actions and inactions”.

According to Prof. Momodu, understanding of Nigeria’s security sector is important to the journalists and media, because it will equip them with the knowledge of the actors, structure, rules and dynamics of the context, and perhaps,
how to professionally navigate the regimented environment of the security sector, when reporting issues related to the sector.

On his part, Dr. Saheed Babajide Owonikoko, who also teaches at the Modibbo Adama University, disclosed that Nigeria has one of the highest number of security organisations in the world.

He however said that allegations of corruption within security organisations in Nigeria, in recent times, has brought out the discussion around corruption within the security sector, and the level of accountability of Nigeria’s security sector.

Owonikoko added that although security funding is increasing, security of lives and properties in Nigeria is plummeting.

His words: “Furthermore, it has also been argued that too much of defence and security funds in a state often leads to over-securitisation and militarisation of the country and this, most times, usually promotes insecurity rather than security”.

Declaring the fellowship close, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani, the Executive Director of CISLAC, who was represented by CISLAC programme officer, Bertha Eloho-Ogbimi, lamented that analyzing, and monitoring defence projects have been a very big challenge for organisations like theirs.

Said Rafsanjani: “Even in the course of this training, we have come to realize the opaque nature of the defence and security project.

“So, we thought we could do something to improve the capacity of our media partners to be able to dig deeper, investigate and come up with better reportage about defence spendings and how they manage their powers in terms of having to apply authority without abusing it.

“Because everything about this project is improving transparency and accountability in the Nigerian Defence Sector in a way that it will favour the masses”.