Philip Obaji Jr. is a Nigeria-based correspondent for The Daily Beast, where he has reported extensively on Russian paramilitaries in Central and West Africa seeking access to minerals to support Russia’s efforts in Ukraine. He also has chronicled Russian paramilitaries’ attacks on refugee camps and mining villages, as well as chronicling human rights abuses and human trafficking in sub-Saharan Africa.
In November, the freelance journalist will receive an award from the International Center for Journalists for his work documenting massacres, rapes, and torture in Central and West Africa. He spoke recently with Natalie Gonnella-Platts, director of global policy at the Bush Institute, and William McKenzie, senior editorial advisor at the Bush Institute, about challenges to journalism in his country and on the African continent. Their exchange includes the accompanying video and text.
How difficult is it for journalists to get accurate information in your country, especially from your government? I know you have focused on the role of malign actors that make it difficult to get accurate information.
It’s very tough. A big journalist in the United States could have multiple contacts. It’s not so easy for journalists here because only a few have earned respect. The established class doesn’t have that much respect for the majority of journalists in Nigeria. So, you don’t have that many contacts in government. The likelihood of getting your phone call answered is low, especially if you’re not friends with that person. Often, journalists have to depend on what they see on social media to get the story.
Also, funding in the media is so low that it makes it very difficult to travel around to verify what you have heard. That is why many journalists often want to find other sources of funding to pursue a project.
Much of my coverage these days is not in Nigeria but in areas close to it, like Central Africa. That’s even tougher. You have to spend money to go there.
You mentioned foreign malign actors. We are in an environment where disinformation is growing, especially from them. It becomes more difficult to fact check because people don’t even know where the information has come from.
The only time anyone came close to knowing exactly what was going on in terms of Russian influence operations affecting Nigeria was when I worked on a documentary with Al Jazeera to investigate this phenomenon. A Nigerian media outlet wouldn’t have that kind of budget.
As a journalist, how do you and your peers build trust with readers, especially knowing that malign actors have exploited situations? How do you break through?
For some reason, people tend to trust what has come from outside. For example, I am a freelance correspondent at the Daily Beast. There’s the tendency to believe what I write there more because I am writing for a Western outlet, even though some people distrust Western outlets because they have this thought of western imperialism. For example, the New York Times will do an investigation on maybe foreign malign operations in Africa, and people are like, wow.
But since a lot of people now believe what the Russians are putting out there, it is becoming difficult for journalists who write for Western outlets to gain trust. People believe that the U.S. and its Western allies have an agenda that is not good for Africa. Russian-backed campaigns are helping people believe these narratives.
Now, some funding for independent media has come from places like USAID and MasterCard Foundation. Some outlets exposing corruption and human rights abuses are getting funding from foreign institutions. But there’s not much funding through advertising.
What efforts, if any, might be happening in your country to help the average news consumer assess the truth of what they’re hearing or reading? This is a big challenge in the U.S. as well.
That is a very big challenge. Let me give you a typical example. I have been very concerned about the growth of Russian-sponsored disinformation across West Africa, not just in Nigeria.
When I started to investigate this information in 2020, I saw a pattern growing in the Central African Republic and then in other neighboring countries. I started to talk about these issues on social media and did that investigation for Al Jazeera.
There weren’t many fact checkers then and there aren’t many organizations helping journalists in Africa understand how to check stories. That’s why you find a lot of disinformation.
I was very happy last year when the Africa Center for Strategic Studies decided to hold two workshops, one in Ghana and the other in Nigeria, to train fact-checkers to identify disinformation: What it is about, why disinformation came to be, and how to tackle it.
When the Russians want to put out disinformation, they contact editors who work on behalf of their campaign. They make sure this African [editor] can place the propaganda in media outlets. They are not contracting any journalist within the organization to write the article. The Russians have written it themselves, and all they’re doing is making sure this article is sent to media outlets and published. The editors are paid to publish these articles or may be coerced into doing so.
Many outlets in Nigeria are publishing Russian disinformation. The editors have been contacted directly by the people behind this campaign.
This challenge is making sure a group of fact checkers know how to combat this information. I mentioned the Africa Center for Strategic Studies workshop. We need more initiatives enlightening journalists and others. Until we have support from civil society groups, the Nigerian government and even from the West, we’ll continue to see this level of disinformation and propaganda grow. That’s my worry.
Not only have the Russians and Chinese invested heavily in propaganda campaigns, they’ve invested heavily in in training journalists, even bringing them to Moscow or Beijing to learn their approach to “journalism.” What’s been the impact on independent media in Nigeria and the other countries where you focus?
In most parts of Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, journalism’s not well-funded. And many journalists have never left their countries.
Russians want results now. They don’t have a long-term idea. They come up with monies in a matter of weeks and begin to spend it on very small but influential outlets and on social media influencers. Those are the kinds of people the Russians target. They go to a small newsroom that is beginning to gain readership, send their people to Moscow on so-called training, take them on excursions around Russia, even to Russian-occupied Ukraine, and then try to brainwash them or tell them to spread their propaganda. They make sure they really understand the world based on Russia’s perspective.
That trend is growing. We’ve had West African journalists in the last year travel to Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine on these kinds of excursions. They’re given handouts, the equivalent of about $200 or $300, sometimes less. Most of these articles that you see on African media outlets cost as little as $80.
That’s based on the investigation for the recent documentary that I did for Al Jazeera. We spoke to places where Russians were placing information. We have receipts that establish $80 was the fee that Russian agents paid these outlets to publish their articles. That is about the monthly salary of the average Nigerian journalist. People are vulnerable because they need to earn money to survive.
The journalists also need exposure and shown they’re important. That’s what Russia is doing and it’s working for them massively.
What led you to become a journalist? Why do you do what you do?
I was very keen about telling stories and wanted to focus on issues around human rights. I have been a journalist for a very long time and am now especially interested in people who have been abused by Russian paramilitaries.
In 2018, three Russian journalists traveled from Moscow to the Central African Republic to investigate the Wagner Group. They got killed somewhere in the central part of the country. My editor at The Daily Beast asked me to find out what these journalists were up to when they traveled there.
The experience opened my eyes to the activities of Russian paramilitaries in the Central African Republic. I saw torture, abuse, and rape at levels I had never seen before. I felt that I had the responsibility to tell the stories of these people. Many of them made it clear to me that they had no voice. That led me into focusing on human rights.
You faced harassment, violence, and detention yourself for choosing to cover this area.
That’s correct. In 2023, I traveled to the Central African Republic, which is where the Wagner [Group], whose founder had just died, was most active outside of Ukraine. I was told that my photo was being circulated in chat groups of Wagner paramilitaries and the commanders of the Wagner Group told all Wagner fighters that if they ever saw me in the Central African Republic, they should arrest me or kill me.
Eventually, while going to interview miners who had fled Russian paramilitaries who had seized their gold mines, a pickup with four Central African soldiers pulled over my motorcycle. One of them grabbed my wrist, started dragging me, and I began to scream. Another hit me and then all of them did. I fell to the ground but when I looked up, I saw two Russian paramilitary soldiers ordering them to take me away.
They took me to a small container at a military outpost and locked me in there overnight. The container had cockroaches and rats, and there was only a small window. I had no food, no water.
Luckily, the motorcyclist who had taken me to the border the previous day saw how the soldiers manhandled me. He ran to a friend who is a senior officer in the Central African military and pleaded with him to come to my rescue. The officer pleaded for my release, and that’s how I got out. Fortunately, the Russians were not there that morning. If they had been, I think they never would have allowed me to go.
I got my wounds treated and returned to the Central African Republic to complete the work I had started.
