Idris Akinbajo is a 30 year-old Nigerian journalist. In November, he won the African Investigative Reporter of the Year Award for an investigative piece into corruption in the Nigerian oil industry, printed in NEXT, a newspaper. NEXT, the paper which published his award-winning feature, is not available in print anymore. Low funds have forced the closure, but the online version, 234next.com, remains.
“I have had to leave NEXT, the newspaper I worked for, because they couldn’t afford to pay salaries”, he explained. On the sidelines of a talk in Holland he was giving on the powers of investigative journalism, he took a moment to discuss press freedom in one of Africa’s most dangerous reporting environments with the Doha Centre for Media Freedom. Doorgaan met lezen “The price of free information in Nigeria”