Tuesday April 07, 2026

The NBC regulates broadcasting in Nigeria. It has been silent since April 3.

On April 3, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, sat for a media chat on Arise TV. He was asked about political tensions. He mentioned Channels TV anchor Seun Okinbaloye, who had been discussing fears of a one-party state.

"If there's any way to break the screen, I would have shot him," Wike said.

The minister's spokesman clarified later that Wike was speaking figuratively. That he didn't mean it literally. That he and Okinbaloye had spoken on the phone and everything was fine.

But here's what the clarification doesn't address. Okinbaloye was discussing the possibility that Nigeria's opposition infrastructure was being weakened ahead of 2027. That is his job. A senior member of the federal cabinet responded to that journalism by saying, on live television, that he would have shot the journalist doing it. The clarification that follows doesn't undo the sentence. The sentence went out on national television. Journalists heard it. Editors heard it. Sources heard it.

By April 4, Amnesty International had condemned the remark as "reckless and violent language" that normalises violence against journalists. By April 5, a coalition of 14 civil society and media advocacy groups had issued a joint statement. By April 6, the Independent Broadcast Association of Nigeria had threatened to boycott Wike's media engagements until he issues a public apology.

The Nigerian Broadcasting Commission regulates what can and cannot be said on Nigerian broadcast media. It has sanctioned stations for far less than a minister threatening to shoot a journalist on live television. Since April 3, it has said nothing.

That silence is not neutral. The NBC decides what it enforces and what it ignores. A regulator that moves quickly on some infractions and not on others reveals something about what it considers an infraction. The question of why a minister threatening a journalist doesn't qualify is one the NBC has not chosen to answer.

Nigeria ranks 122 out of 180 countries on global press freedom indices. The groups that condemned Wike's statement noted that this ranking reflects not just direct attacks on journalists but the climate that public statements create. A minister who says he would shoot someone for journalism, and a regulator that doesn't respond to that, are both part of how that climate is maintained.