On Friday, March 13, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu hosted a glittering assemblage of Nigeria's media elite. While framed as an interfaith fast-breaking, the gathering transcended ritual to become an unpretentious X-ray of an industry in crisis.
All is no longer "at ease" with the Nigerian media. Like a ship caught in a violent gale, the press is taking on water, and the deck is tilting dangerously. In such moments, the first line of defence is clarity. As the alarm--a piercing, rhythmic shriek--drags the crew to their stations, fear must be transmuted into action. The crew must move faster than the rising tide beneath their boots.
This is precisely what the "media crew" dining with the President sought to do. Led by the President of the Newspaper Proprietors' Association of Nigeria, Lady Maiden Alex-Ibru, the industry's drivers bypassed pleasantries to deliver an unmistakable S.O.S. The spokesman for the media, Frank Aigbogun who is also NPAN's Deputy President, was blunt, accusing global Big Tech firms of "scraping" proprietary creative content to train AI models, often by breaching digital paywalls. He pointedly requested that the President direct the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to investigate how Big Tech's dominance and anti-competitive practices are costing local media at least 70% of their legitimate income. He is right.
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The Nigerian media is currently a sinking ship, but it is not alone in these stormy waters. As global ad revenues evaporate into the coffers of Silicon Valley, a provocative blueprint for rescue is emerging from the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
The UK has just unveiled a "Local Media Strategy," headlined by a £12 million Local News Fund. This is not a mere handout; it is a clinical intervention designed to eliminate "news deserts"--geographic areas where credible local reporting has vanished--and to pivot legacy publishers toward sustainable, digital-first business models.
Again, last week, the UK government issued a new statement on AI and copyright. It rejected Big Tech's "opt-out" exception as unworkable and argued that giving away the UK's rich creative content is not a sustainable route to growth. This has clearly shown that the clamour to save the press transcends the economics of helping media owners and becomes a fundamental principle of protecting the state and democracy.
Therefore, the British model offers more than an example; it offers a mirror. To sustain trusted news, the Tinubu administration must move beyond intermittent gestures of "tariff relief." Nigeria requires a structural National Media Sustainability Act that treats journalism not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure, as is the case in the UK. Nigerian media owners, too, must embrace the inevitable change by prioritising the "digital-first" as against the 20th-century copy sales model.
Indeed, the British Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) identified that 4.4 million people in the UK live in news deserts. In Nigeria, the scale of this vacuum is staggering. While markets in Lagos and Abuja remain hyper-competitive, vast swaths of the rest of the country have become informational voids.
These deserts are where democracy goes to die. When no reporter is present to cover a local council election in rural Zamfara, or to investigate the siphoning of healthcare funds in Enugu, the state loses its most effective early-warning system.
Gratefully, President Tinubu signalled a willingness to provide tariff relief on media consumables--cameras, transmitters, ink and newsprint. While a pragmatic start in an economy weaponised by a fluctuating Naira, equipment is only half the ledger. The British strategy recognises that the main "infrastructure" in 2026 is digital.
The UK fund specifically supports third parties developing ad-tech and website infrastructure. Nigerian media houses do not just need cheaper cameras; they need to get global digital gatekeepers to pay for their content.
The sea is a persistent thief; it does not need a door to enter, only a seam. Knowing that a temporary seal is the only bridge to a permanent solution. Giant tech and generative AI firms are worse than thieves: they are cross-border bandits. Only a permanent solution can keep them at bay. Nigerian publishers are trapped in their digital hegemony. They produce the content, but the "lion's share" of the value is siphoned off by global platforms--Meta, Google, and X--who host the news without equitable compensation. For a permanent solution, rhetoric on "content infringement" must be codified into law, and its strong enforcement must be ensured.
Nigeria should follow the precedents set by Australia and Canada by implementing a Mandatory News Media Bargaining Code. This would legally compel tech giants to negotiate fair payment for the Nigerian journalism they profit from. Without this, the Nigerian newsroom remains a "content serf" to Silicon Valley.
Furthermore, we must modernise "statutory notices." In the UK, local councils are required to pay for public announcements in newspapers--an injection of £40 million annually. In Nigeria, government advertising has long been a "carrot and stick" used to reward sycophancy. By depolitizing this spend and mandating that public notices be distributed to verified, high-reach digital and national outlets, the government could create a transparent "democratic subsidy."
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UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy recently noted that supporting the media is "not a nice-to-have"; it is essential for a cohesive country. Nigeria must adopt this same urgency. A fragmented nation requires a shared reality. To achieve this, we must move from the era of media as a propaganda tool to an era of media as essential infrastructure.
As a student of political science, I am well-tutored in the shenanigans of politicians. We know that another election cycle is here again. However, it would be a colossal error of judgment to play politics with the fate of the press. The integrity of the Nigerian state will be determined by whether we choose to invest in the truth or let it starve in the desert.
Unlike a typical politician, a statesman understands that the state is not merely a collection of current voters, but a "partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born," as Edmund Burke, the Irish philosopher and politician, famously articulated. And as a line in our national anthem succinctly puts it: the labour of our heroes past shall not be in vain. The ball is now in President Tinubu's court. Will he choose to be a politician or a statesman?
Time will tell.
- *Adediran, Chief Executive Officer, Newspaper Proprietors' Association of Nigeria, writes via [email protected]
