In August 2024, PREMIUM TIMES journalist Yakubu Mohammed was physically assaulted, arrested and briefly detained by Nigerian police officers while covering the #EndBadGovernance protest in Abuja.
Mr Mohammed was hit with the butt of their gun and their batons until he sustained injuries on his head. He was then arrested and briefly detained in a police van placed near the Head of Service building in the Federal Secretariat area of Abuja. Mr Mohammed was wearing a press vest that clearly identified him as a journalist and also presented his identity card to the police officers, but was not spared from the police brutality.
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Mr Mohammed is just one of many journalists around the country who suffered attacks and harassment for bravely red-flagging criminal activity. The targeting of media practitioners is increasing at an alarming rate in Nigerian states and the FCT, according to the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) Openness Index.
Between December 2023 and November 2024, 48 cases of press freedomCJID violations were perpetrated by security agents, the report stated.
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Across the country, respondents highlighted the role of the police, military, and state security agents in suppressing dissent, harassing journalists, and deterring civic activism.
“Even states with otherwise strong legal and political frameworks often recorded poor scores in this dimension, underscoring the gap between law and enforcement,” the report said.
The findings of the CJID Openness Index, a subnational assessment of press freedom and civic space in Nigeria, reveal an uneven democratic landscape in Africa’s largest democracy.
The CJID Index provides a state-by-state ranking of openness in Nigeria for the first time, combining perception-based and incident-based data into a composite score for each state.
The index is built on a rigorous methodology and informed by the perspectives of more than 1,110 professional journalists, media owners, publishers, and civil society actors, alongside empirical incident tracking from the CJID Press Attack Tracker. The Index offers a nuanced portrait of Nigeria’s democratic landscape.
CJID’s Chief Executive Officer, Dapo Olorunyomi, said this index is the first comprehensive attempt to systematically assess the state of openness and the conditions that enable expression, participation, and media freedom across all 36 Nigerian states and the Federal Capital Territory.
“By combining the lived experiences of over 1,100 respondents with verified incident tracking, this index offers a data‑driven picture of where openness thrives and where it is under threat. What we find is both sobering and hopeful. Openness is not a given; it is uneven, often fragile, and must be continuously protected,” Mr Olorunyomi said.
Without openness, Mr Olorunyomi said, the space for ideas, dissent, and dialogue shrinks, while elections become performative, governance becomes opaque, and power goes unchecked.
“Yet, openness does not manifest uniformly, especially in a federal system like Nigeria’s. While national‑level policies and rhetoric often claim democratic values, the lived experience of openness is determined largely at the state level. In some states, journalists operate with relative independence, and citizens engage robustly with their governments. In others, media workers face harassment, civic actors are silenced, and basic information is denied the public.
Top performing states
Details of the report show that Cross River is the most open state in Nigeria. It is notable for its tolerance of dissent, proactive information disclosure, and relatively safe environment for journalists and civic actors, the report said.
The quadruple of Ondo, Delta, Katsina, and Ekiti ranked among the top five states, also demonstrates strong institutional protections, functional media environments, and low incidences of harassment.
Meanwhile, the lowest-performing states based on the perception index are Anambra, Nasarawa, Bauchi, Ebonyi, and Imo states.
They all performed below average on indicators that appraised political tolerance, media independence, and behaviour of the security forces, reflecting a repressive environment.
Lagos, despite being Nigeria’s media hub and most cosmopolitan city, recorded persistent high‑severity violations, including the harassment and detention of journalists, alongside poor perceptions of openness.
It ranks 22nd on the perception index, but, for instance, accounts for the highest number of murders recorded against journalists in the country, using PAT data.
Southern states generally performed better than Northern states, but with significant exceptions, the report stated.
Some states with relatively robust legal frameworks still reported high incident rates, underscoring the gap between the law and practice.
While this inaugural edition of the CJID Openness Index covers Nigeria’s 36 states and the FCT, CJID aims to expand the Index into a pan‑African platform, measuring openness at the subnational level across the continent in 2026.
“This is critical because Africa is increasingly a battleground between competing models of governance: democratic, authoritarian, and hybrid. To defend and deepen democratic norms, we need African‑led, locally grounded data to track progress and setbacks.”
How CJID measures openness
The Index evaluates each state across seven diagnostic factors, which together capture the structural, behavioural, and experiential dimensions of openness.
Political Environment꞉: Here, the index assesses tolerance for dissent, freedom of assembly, and freedom of expression by political actors and institutions.
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Legal Environment: The researchers evaluate the existence and enforcement of laws that support or inhibit freedom of expression and media rights.
Economic Environment: The report measures the financial viability of media operations, ownership patterns, and advertising dynamics.
Social and Cultural Context: The study examines societal attitudes toward press freedom, including gender, religion, ethnicity, and social norms.
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Journalistic Principles and Practices꞉: The researchers examine internal media standards, professional ethics, and capacity for independent journalism.
Treatment of Journalists꞉: Tracks physical attacks, harassment, intimidation, and legal actions targeting journalists.
Gender Inclusion꞉ Focuses on gender representation in media leadership and coverage, and experiences of gender‑based discrimination
Mr Olorunyomi said this index is a call to action as it offers policymakers, journalists, civil society actors, and citizens a clear, comparative view of how their states are doing, and where work is needed. “By setting key benchmarks, it creates a framework for accountability and reform. We also made a deliberate choice to speak of openness as it captures the enabling environment, the laws, the safety, the access, and the institutional conditions that allow individual voices to matter.”
