According to the French agency, Reporters Without Borders, Nigeria was described in the annual World Press Freedom Index as a country with low freedom of media.
Nigeria was ranked as 111 among 180 countries.
The World Press Freedom Index ranks the performance of 180 countries according to a range of criteria that include media pluralism andindependence, respect for the safety and freedomof journalists, and the legislative, institutionaland infrastructural environment in which the media operate.
The report says that information is becoming an increasingly rare commodity in Nigeria as the Islamist rebel group Boko Haram continues to terrorise the northeast of the country. The experts state that Boko Haram is also winning the information war in the rest of the country in as much as the government tolerates no discussion of security issues.
According to the agency: “When orders are defied, newspaper issues are seized or distribution is obstructed. Journalists have repeatedly been denied access to the trials of Boko Haram members. There are few checks on the power wielded by state governors in this very decentralized country. The deputy editor of the Sun, a newspaper in the southeastern state of Abia, was arrested at his home in the middle of the night in March 2014 and was held arbitrarily on a charge of seditious publications against the governor with intent to bring him into hatred or contempt.”
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