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By Fred Itua
Between 2020 and 2024, according to National Bureau of Statistics data cited in my study, more than two million Nigerians left the country. «Japa», the Yoruba slang for fleeing, became the shorthand for a generation›s decision to go. The same bureau put 133 million Nigerians, or 63 per cent of the population, in multidimensional poverty. Its migration survey found that about half of intending migrants had no means of livelihood.
Much has been written about why Nigerians leave and by which routes. Far less has been written about how the media, the institution that tells the country what migration means, has handled the subject. The few Nigerian studies available were short, tied to single events or confined to one sub theme, and they disagreed with one another. Some found coverage securitised and negative. Others found compassion and risk awareness.
Nobody had measured the coverage over a sustained period, by consistent rules, against the ethical standards set by the International Organisation for Migration and the Ethical Journalism Network.
That gap was the problem. Without a baseline, editors, policymakers and migrant advocates could only argue from impression. My doctoral thesis at Veritas University, Abuja, «Newspaper Coverage of Post-COVID19 Irregular Migration in Nigeria: January 2020 to May 2023», set out to supply one.
How the evidence was gathered
The study used content analysis, the systematic coding of published text. The population was 3,741 editions of The Punch, The Guardian and The Sun over 41 months. From it, a sample of 362 articles was drawn by stratified random sampling, sized with the Taro Yamane formula. Each article was coded for frequency, prominence, framing, sourcing and tone, using a coding sheet that was checked by experts for validity and tested for intercoder reliability. The theoretical anchor was framing theory, supported by agenda setting, agenda building, gatekeeping and the social responsibility theory of the press.
I should declare that I work at The Sun Newspaper, one of the three titles examined. The same rules were applied to all of them.
What the newspapers did
Coverage was thin. The three titles together averaged about nine articles a month, rising to its highest level in 2021 as repatriation flights resumed and the Japa conversation took hold. For an issue of this weight, that is not sustained attention.
Placement told the same story. Only 13.3 per cent of articles reached the front page, while 79.8 per cent sat on inside pages. Banner headlines appeared on 8.8 per cent, and 48.3 per cent ran without a photograph. Long pieces of more than 800 words, the kind in which investigation happens, made up 18.5 per cent.
Three frames carried most of the coverage: security at 27.1 per cent, humanitarian at 23.5 per cent and criminal justice at 21.0 per cent, together 71.6 per cent. Economic frames, which treat migration as a response to failing conditions at home, reached 11.3 per cent. Policy and governance reached 8.8 per cent, and development just 1.9 per cent.
Nearly three in four stories (74.0 per cent) were episodic, built around an arrest, a deportation, a rescue or a court judgement. Stories that asked why the departures keep happening were rare.
The sourcing was lopsided. Government agencies, international organisations, officials and law enforcement supplied 70.8 per cent of all citations. Migrants and returnees supplied 7.8 per cent, and their families 2.7 per cent. More than 40 per cent of articles had no identifiable source or only one type of source.
Tone and language completed the picture. Negative coverage accounted for 48.6 per cent of articles and positive coverage for 14.4 per cent. Migrants appeared as victims in 54.7 per cent and as people with agency in 9.4 per cent. The phrase «illegal migration» appeared in 39.5 per cent of articles, although the IOM advises against it because it suggests that the person, rather than the movement, is illegal.
My conclusion was that the media has acted as a mirror of the state›s anxieties and not as a window into the migrant›s reality.
A habit shared across newsrooms
The statistical tests carry a finding that deserves attention from every editor in Nigeria. Differences between the three newspapers in frequency, prominence and tone were not statistically significant. Dominance of the security, humanitarian and criminal justice frames, by contrast, was strongly significant. The weakness therefore belongs to the profession›s routines and not to one publication.
There were differences of degree. The Guardian recorded the lowest share of negative tone, at 40.5 per cent, and the highest inclusion of migrant voices, at 9.5 per cent. The Sun recorded the highest negative tone, at 53.3 per cent, and the heaviest use of stigmatising terminology, at 44.2 per cent. I report that about my own newspaper without comfort, because evidence is only useful if it is applied evenly. It also shows that better practice is possible inside a Nigerian newsroom.
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What newsrooms can do
The thesis makes five recommendations, each tied to a measured shortfall.
First, treat irregular migration as a standing beat with a named reporter, so that coverage does not depend on a tragedy at sea or a deportation flight.
Second, raise its position in the paper. Stories that matter belong on the front page, with pictures and headlines that match their weight.
Third, widen the frames. Economic, governance and development angles should sit beside security and rescue, and thematic reporting should be encouraged over the event driven kind.
Fourth, source from the bottom up. Returnees, families and community leaders should be treated as expert witnesses on their own lives and not as colour added after the official statement.
Fifth, change the stylebook. «Illegal migration» should be retired and «irregular migration» adopted.
None of these needs a large budget. They need an editorial decision, a short training session and a consistent habit.
What the study adds to knowledge
The thesis makes three contributions. The first is theoretical. It combines framing, agenda setting, agenda building, gatekeeping and social responsibility theories in a single design applied to the Japa era, offering a template for media analysis in the Global South, where such work remains thin.
The second is methodological. It provides a coding framework that turns ethical standards into measurable variables, so that compliance can be counted and not merely asserted. It also fixes baseline indicators against which later coverage can be judged: 13.3 per cent front page placement, 74.0 per cent episodic framing, 7.8 per cent migrant voice, 48.6 per cent negative tone and 39.5 per cent use of stigmatising terminology. A researcher in Dakar, Accra or Bamako can replicate the design and compare results.
The third is practical. It gives the Federal Ministry of Information, the National Orientation Agency, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons and the IOM evidence about how migration is presented to the public, and about whose voices are missing from that presentation.
Limits and next steps
The study covers three titles and ends in May 2023. It did not interview journalists, so it can show what the patterns are but cannot fully explain why they exist. It also did not measure audience reaction. I propose further work on digital native outlets, on how prospective migrants respond to fear based coverage, on links between coverage peaks and policy priorities, and on comparison with Senegal, Ghana and Mali.
From thesis to book
The research does not end in a university library. A book drawn from the thesis, «The Babylonians: Academic Exposè on Migration, Media and the Nigerian Paradox», will be in bookshops nationwide from next year. It carries the findings to the general reader, the people who buy newspapers, vote in elections and, in many cases, have a relative who has left or is thinking of leaving.
That readership matters most. A country cannot reason well about migration if the people at the centre of it are largely absent from the pages that describe them. Those pages can be corrected, and the evidence for doing so is now on record.
• Itua, PhD, is the Politics Editor of The Sun Newspaper.
