A former NLNG chief, Chima Ibeneche, once captured the contradiction deftly when he said Nigeria produced “world-class journalists” (the likes of Babatunde Jose, Peter Enahoro, Mamman Daura, and Dele Giwa) but lacked world-class media institutions. The tragedy is that even this compliment is now dated; today, much of the industry can no longer confidently claim either. The problem is not a shortage of talent or courage. It is the absence of strong, well-governed, well-capitalised companies that can protect that talent from political storms, economic shocks and technological disruption.
Nothing revealed this institutional weakness more plainly than the on-going storm over the United States’ threat to invade Nigeria on account of rising insecurity and persecution of Christians. In a healthier media ecosystem, this would have been a moment for calm, authoritative reporting: clear timelines of what was said and by whom, careful legal and diplomatic analysis, serious engagement with the evidence on insecurity and religious freedom, and an honest conversation about sovereignty, governance failure and international responsibility.
Instead, most Nigerians encountered the crisis first, and often only, through a cacophony of social media feeds that swung wildly between triumphalist nationalism, panic, conspiracy theories and sectarian outrage.
The contrast was brutal. On the one hand, a matter touching the country’s territorial integrity, international standing and deeply sensitive ethno-religious questions. On the other hand, a public sphere dominated by confused and noisy platforms, many of which spewed more ignorance than coherence. Screens filled with doctored videos, half-translated foreign clips, “breaking news” from anonymous handles, and breathless voice notes promising insider information from Washington or Abuja. For many citizens, it became almost impossible to distinguish a serious policy debate from an online sectarian brawl.
Legacy media did not escape this undertow; in many cases, they were dragged along by it. Rather than setting the terms and tone of discussion, too many newsrooms simply recycled whatever was already trending, quoting tweets instead of interrogating sources, staging gladiatorial talk shows instead of commissioning sober reporting, and amplifying partisan talking points instead of independently examining the security and rights record that had drawn external scrutiny in the first place. The same outlets that once prided themselves on being the nation’s gatekeepers now often resemble tributaries of the social media river they should be filtering.
This failure is not, at root, about individual incompetence. It is structural. Newsrooms operating on shoestring budgets, with shrinking investigative desks and precariously paid staff, struggle to fund the kind of specialised diplomatic, security and data reporting that such a story requires. Owners whose fortunes are entangled with political patrons find it safer to echo official outrage than to probe whether aspects of the international concern might be grounded in reality. Editors who live in daily fear of advertiser flight and regulatory harassment think twice before running deep, potentially unpopular pieces that challenge both government narratives and social media hysteria.
In this void, social media has become both megaphone and arena. It remains invaluable as an early warning system and as a space where marginalised voices can speak back to power. But it is a poor substitute for institutions tasked with weighing evidence, applying professional standards and accepting legal accountability for what they publish. Algorithms are optimised for engagement, not understanding; they reward anger and tribal solidarity, not nuance. When a complex, high-stakes international confrontation is mediated primarily through such mechanisms, it is no surprise that Nigerians feel more inflamed than informed.
The deeper danger is that repeated episodes like this normalise a politics of permanent fever. If every external criticism is instantly framed as an existential attack, if every call for accountability is cast as treachery, and if every diplomatic twist is interpreted through partisan or sectarian lenses, the space for rational self-correction shrinks.
A mature media culture would help the country ask hard, double-edged questions: What is exaggerated or self-serving in the rhetoric of foreign powers, and what in our own governance failures has made such rhetoric plausible? How do we defend sovereignty without denying real victims? How do we confront insecurity and religious tension without turning neighbours into enemies?
Answering such questions requires institutions that can stand apart from the daily social media brawl; institutions that invest in beat expertise, protect reporters, and treat trust as capital to be accumulated over decades, not burned for tomorrow’s spike in traffic. Nigeria has the raw material for such renewal in its tradition of courageous reporting and its young, digitally fluent population. What is missing is the hard, unglamorous work of building news organisations whose ownership structures, governance, technology and products are strong enough to resist both state pressure and the tug of viral hysteria.
Until that work is done, crises like the threatened American intervention will continue to play out in a hall of mirrors: serious national questions refracted through partisan timelines, sectarian echo chambers and legacy outlets that have forgotten how to lead. Social media is not the enemy; it is an amplifier of confusion and fear when the underlying institutions are weak. When they are strong, it can help carry good journalism farther and faster. Nigeria’s urgent task is to ensure that the next time the nation’s fate becomes the subject of global debate, its own media are not merely retweeting the storm, but calmly steering the ship.
