How we did our award-winning stories, by NEXT editor Mojeed
When you started investigating the fraud in the oil sector, did you have an award in view? Why? Not at all. I have been a journalist in greater part of my working life, and my journalism, is driven by a deep desire to be an agent or advocate for orderliness, transparency, good governance, social change […]
When you started investigating the fraud in the oil sector, did you have an award in view? Why?
Not at all. I have been a journalist in greater part of my working life, and my journalism, is driven by a deep desire to be an agent or advocate for orderliness, transparency, good governance, social change and justice in my immediate community and country. So, when I do or supervise the production of a story, these are always my objectives. Some of my friends wonder why I am consistently angry about the deep-seated corruption, widespread poverty and misgovernance that our inept, and sometime criminal leaders have foisted on our immensely endowed country. I tell them that these are the issues that should be at the core of any responsible journalism and social activism. I have never had an award in mind while doing any story. I feel fulfilled when I provide a voice to the voiceless, highlight the plights of the oppressed and make those that are destabilizing our country and stealing us blind uncomfortable. And to say the truth, I am actually lazy at putting in my works for awards. I have been lucky to do a lot of stories, but I am poor at remembering to enter them for awards.
What was the winning story about?
The winning story is an expose on the brazen fraud in the oil sector in which our petroleum minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, was repeatedly mentioned. When we started out, our motivation was to beam some light on the darkness that our oil and gas industry had become. Our petroleum industry is a non-transparent, hugely corrupt sector where you will find officials outrightly stealing national resources or cornering oil interests in clearly amorphous, brazenly criminal deals. We, in the media, have not helped matters with our straitjacket, shallow, and sometimes compromised reporting of the sector, which incidentally is our country’s cash cow. So, my team on the investigative desk of NEXT just decided at one of our meetings in February this year to take a serious, comprehensive look at the activities of the sector.
You published six series on the same issue. Why?
The Nigerian oil sector is a huge and complex sector. As we investigated, we found so much information than we envisaged, and it became necessary to publish our report in parts to enable our readers make sense of it all. We started off with a damning report, which exposed how oil marketers were compelled by administration officials, allegedly on orders from above, to pay huge bribes in US dollars in exchange for licenses to export petrol. We provided audio and video evidence of the scam. The second, third and fourth parts of the report revealed some of the most audacious criminal deals through which our national assets, very lucrative oil blocks, were secretly signed away for pittance to shadowy, no-address, briefcase companies, in outright violation of our laws.
It seemed you had agenda to ruin the petroleum minister; if not, why were you the only newspaper doing the story?
I’m sure you are familiar with my antecedent as an advocate of responsible journalism. I have never set out to ruin any individual, group or corporation because I always put them in my shoes. When you destroy fellow human beings and businesses with reckless journalism, most times you can’t unmake the damage even when you now know the facts. When I set out to report, I let the facts lead me. And, as you know, responsible journalism, powered by facts, is not a respecter of persons. The facts are that the deals we reported were struck while Mrs. Alison-Madueke was minister of petroleum. The provided the fact we have which indicated that the minister skipped the compulsory national service, and that she backdated her year of graduation by five years. We didn’t skew the facts, we only placed them before the world so readers could be the judge. And we pestered Mrs Alison-Madueke’s consistently to tell us her side of the story. We telephoned her several times, sent her text messages, and I once met her physically. She once agreed to grant us an interview, but she later reneged.
It is unfortunate that other newspapers refused to key into the story. That worries me about the media in our country. Elsewhere, newspapers are never shy to do follow-ups on big stories broken by their rivals. It was The Daily Telegraph that broke the MP expenses scandal in the UK. But it was The Guardian that became the most creative in the reporting of the scandal. That could not have happened here. When one newspaper breaks a story here, the others stay aloof. At times, they allow themselves to be used to rubbish the reporting of their rivals.
You were given the Editor’s Courage Award because you claimed you resisted pressures and went ahead to do the stories. What sort of pressure did you face while doing the story?
We were offered bribes. Some characters who portrayed themselves as agents of the minister and other persons named in the story wanted us to name our price for dropping the story. I was later told that my publisher a huge sum of million in foreign currency bribe, which he rejected. Pressures were put on us through close friends, publicists and professional colleagues. Some officials of the NNPC frequently threatened me. When those didn’t work, the police and other security agencies began to harass us. After the first part of the series was published, a police team headed by a Commissioner of Police began to harass me. Several times for about four weeks, secret operatives visited our office with the intent of arresting me. My reporters and I abandoned the office and went underground. Apparently frustrated that they couldn’t find me, the police wrote an official letter to my newspaper, inviting me for questioning. Even when our Managing Editor, Kadaria Ahmed, offered to honour the invitation in my place, the police insisted that she must appear alongside me. When she honoured the invitation at the police headquarters in Abuja, she was detained for the entire day.
Why didn’t you cave in; take the cash and make your wife happy with, perhaps, a new car?
See, you are as wealthy as you think. I am contented with what I have. Like all human beings, I need money and all the good things of life. But I will never sell my conscience, or drop a story for any amount of money. My ambition in life is not to be as rich as Bill Gates or Aliko Dangote. My ambition is to be able to contribute as much as possible to the process of change in my community and country.
What techniques did you apply in investigating the story?
We applied several techniques: extensive research, undercover reporting, documents trail, data mining/analysis. We also employed observation and conducted extensive interviews with low and high-calibre operators in the oil and gas industry.