For decades, Nigerian media served as the backbone of the country’s democracy exposing corruption, holding governments accountable, and giving voice to citizens in ways that no other institution could. Today, that backbone is breaking.
Newsrooms are shrinking, newspapers are folding, experienced journalists are fleeing the profession or the country, and the quality of public interest reporting is in visible decline. The cause of this crisis is no mystery. Global technology companies ;Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon have built trillion-dollar empires partly on the back of content produced by media organisations they have never fairly compensated.
The Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO), a coalition of major industry stakeholders comprising the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria (NPAN), the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP), and the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON), is now pushing for revenue-sharing arrangements that would compel these platforms to pay for the journalistic content they profit from. It is a fight that is long overdue.
The Reuters Institute reports that Google and Facebook alone capture over 70 per cent of global digital advertising revenue money that once flowed to the newspapers, television stations, and radio broadcasters that actually produce original content.
The International News Media Association estimates that traditional publishers worldwide have lost up to 60 per cent of their advertising income to tech platforms since the mid-2000s, a bleeding that totals roughly $42 billion annually across major markets.
In Australia, the Competition and Consumer Commission found that for every $100 spent on digital advertising in 2021, Google took $53 Facebook took $28, and the remaining $19 was shared among everyone else, including the publishers whose content drew the audiences in the first place.
There is a data gap of the situation in Nigeria, but the deleterous impact on the media is not in doubt.
What makes this crisis particularly dangerous is that it is not merely an industry problem. It is a democracy problem. Corruption thrives in the absence of scrutiny. Misinformation fills the vacuum left by credible journalism. And citizens, deprived of reliable information, become vulnerable to manipulation by political actors and algorithmic echo chambers alike.
In a country where governance failures already cost lives daily from collapsing infrastructure, underfunded hospitals to security crises that go unexamined the erosion of the media’s watchdog capacity is not an abstract concern. It is a clear and present danger.
The NPO’s push for revenue-sharing is modelled on approaches that have already produced results elsewhere. Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, enacted in 2021, compelled Google and Facebook to negotiate payment deals with Australian publishers.
Canada followed with its Online News Act. The European Union has implemented copyright directives that require platforms to compensate publishers for content. These frameworks are imperfect as the terms of many deals remain confidential, and Meta responded to Canada’s legislation by temporarily blocking news content on its platforms entirely.
But the principle they establish is sound: companies that profit from distributing journalistic content have an obligation to share that revenue with the organisations that produce it.
In the opinion of this newspaper, Nigeria must adopt and adapt this principle to its own context, and the National Assembly has a responsibility to provide the legislative framework that makes it enforceable.
But legislation alone will not solve this problem. The tech companies command lobbying resources that dwarf the entire revenue of the Nigerian media industry. Google and Meta have demonstrated repeatedly in Australia, Canada, and across Europe that they are willing to play hardball, threatening to withdraw services or restrict news content rather than accept terms they consider unfavourable.
Nigerian publishers must therefore prepare for resistance, and the only effective counter to corporate power of this magnitude is coordinated, broad-based pressure.
The NPO must present a united front. Division or fragmentation at this stage would be fatal to the cause.
The continental dimension of this fight also cannot be ignored. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation and its largest economy. What happens to Nigerian media sets the tone for the continent. If big tech can operate in Nigeria without fairly compensating publishers, there is no reason to expect different outcomes in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, or anywhere else on the continent.
If Nigeria succeeds in establishing a credible revenue-sharing framework as South Africahas done, it creates a precedent that other African nations can build on. The African Union, Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS),and regional media associations should be actively engaged in this effort, because a weakened media sector anywhere in Africa is a threat to democratic governance everywhere on the continent.
It pertinent to point out that the survival of independent journalism in Africa’s largest democracy is not a parochial concern. It is a test of whether the global information ecosystem can function in a way that is fair to all participants, not just the most powerful.
The NPO has laid out a credible roadmap for engaging stakeholders and building the coalitions necessary to compel action. That is a commendable first step. But a roadmap is not a destination. The harder work: sustained political advocacy, legislative drafting, continental coordination, and direct negotiation with companies whose resources are virtually limitless lies ahead.
Nigerian media has fought for its survival before, under military dictatorships that shuttered newsrooms and jailed editors. This fight is different in character but no less consequential. The adversary is not a general with a decree but an algorithm with a balance sheet.
And the stakes are identical: the survival of an institution without which Nigerian democracy cannot function.
