By Chigozie Chukwuleta
One day training on Newsroom Engagement on navigating Legal Challenges, Laws That Criminalize Journalism And Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPS) has ended in Awka, Anambra state with a call on journalists, Media Owners and Managers to increase the volume of abiding by laws that predisposes them to attacks.
The training organised by the Centre For Journalism Innovation And Development (CJID) held at the Newsroom of UNIZIK FM on Thursday 28 August, 2025 had in attendance Newsroom Managers, Media Executives and Media Owners from South East and South South.
During the training, participants were sensitised on the operational and legal strategies of overcoming challenges faced by newsrooms in the wake of the current increase in threats to Press freedom in Nigeria by strategic lawsuits and all forms of press attacks.
The training also brought to fore ways to identify and avoid practices that could predispose media practitioners to attacks and lawsuits and enjoined them to be proactive in matters of taxes, insurance and legal postulations when publishing stories.
In her opening remarks, Mrs Busola Ajibola said that CJID through the training is advocating for ways the media can navigate the emerging trends of threats to Press freedom through proactiveness in optimising tenable operations.
“We are seeing an emerging trends in legal threats that Newsrooms are facing particularly SLAPS. It is just to garg the media, to censor them, sometimes to drain them economically, financially and emotionally”,
“And we thought what we can we do. At least where to start is to start engaging media managers, exposed them to what we see we can do internally. How can we as media also abide by laws that predispose us to harassment and more than that, how do we navigate these emerging legal threats”, she explained.
The Managing Editor, Premium Times Newspaper, Mr Idris Akinbajo while delivering the lecture, ‘Operational Strategies For Journalists And Media Organisations To Avoid Legal Repression’, observed that governments at all levels in Nigeria are not appreciative of critical journalism such that holds them accountable.
He said that as a result, governments are always in the business of trying to clamp down on journalists and media organisations that try to hold them accountable.
“But there are steps we as Newsrooms managers, Media Executives, Media Owners can take to limit chances of the government or to close the loopholes that the government can use to attack us”,
“One of the steps for example is when we media owners withdraw pension contributions from our staff, we remit same to the pension Commission through the appropriate channel and not commit crime by not doing so”,
“We know there are laws guiding this pension but some media owners withdraw this from editors and reporters but do not remit them to appropriate authorities thereby attracting unnecessary clamp down from any government who would easily check their pension records “,
“All we need to do as Media Managers, Media Owners is to try and close this kind of loopholes by doing the right thing as he who calls for equity must come with clean hands”, he said
Other lectures include understanding inhibiting laws laws against Journalism and how to navigate SLAPS by Inibehe Effing, Gender Nuances of Press freedom violations in Nigeria by Mrs Busola Ajibola and Using CJID’s Press Attack Tracker In Reporting Press Freedom Violations.
Highlight of training include Media Executive Dialogue: Experience sharing on managing SLAPPs and other forms of repression with Media Executives as panelists and moderated by Mrs Busola Ajibola.
