Nigeria’s best journalists are leaving – and remuneration is not the only problem
On the day he was notified that he was a finalist for the 2019 Thomson Reuters Young Journalist Award, Amos Abba anticipated a flourishing long-term career.
On the day he was notified that he was a finalist for the 2019 Thomson Reuters Young Journalist Award, Amos Abba anticipated a flourishing long-term career.
Down the line, his investigations into water contamination by a multinational company, illegal activities of loan sharks, and the erroneous Nigerian military airstrikes that killed civilians held power to account and established him as an award-winning journalist at the peak of his profession. But today, he no longer works as a full-time journalist in Nigeria.
“I was just exhausted,” Mr Abba said. “If I had depended on my take-home for the month, it was usually not sustainable. I had to look for other sources of livelihood to sustain my living. For me, that was the biggest challenge.”
The writing was on the wall from the beginning. After graduating in 2016, Mr Abba’s introduction to professional journalism came through unpaid freelance work for a major Nigerian newspaper, a role he held until 2018.
“I was doing menial jobs. Whatever I got from it, I would use it to pursue my stories. At the time, it was just love for the craft; the money was the last thing on my mind,” he said.
Mr Abba secured a full-time job in 2019 after a short internship, but financial challenges persisted owing to poor remuneration. In 2022, he left to pursue a master’s degree in the United States and has since not returned to full-time practice in Nigerian journalism.
In 2020, one year after Mr Abba’ nomination, Kabir Adejumo emerged as one of the winners of the Thomson Reuters Young Journalist Award. He won the award for his highly risky investigative report that exposed how border guards on the Nigeria-Benin Republic border allowed people to cross in violation of COVID-19 rules in both countries.
A few months after publication, Mr Adejumo left for another newsroom that offered higher pay. “I left because I felt like I wanted a bigger challenge and I wanted better pay,” he said.
A mix of low pay, job risks and other challenges forced Adejumo to quit full-time practice barely five years later.
The issue of poor remuneration driving the exits of Mr Abba, Mr Adejumo, and dozens of other journalists interviewed or surveyed for this report is widely acknowledged in Nigerian journalism. Journalists routinely decry low pay, media managers often complain about declining revenues, and regulators at times flag the problem. However, the scale of this challenge and its impact on critical accountability reporting in Africa’s largest democracy remain underreported.
Within the past decade, Nigeria has experienced severe brain drain, in several sectors, such as health and education. Journalists have extensively documented this crisis, yet they rarely turn the lens on the massive talent exodus affecting the Nigerian media itself.
The scale of the problem is evident in the survey data collected for this report. Of the 50 former full-time practitioners surveyed, 64 per cent identified low remuneration as their primary reason for leaving.
Slovakia-based salary survey platform, Paylab, estimates the monthly minimum and average salaries for Nigerian journalists at N172,461 ($126.55) and N347,760 ($255.17), respectively. The dollar rates are calculated based on the Central Bank of Nigeria’s rate of N1,362.84 to one dollar, as of June 9, 2026.
However, these figures inflate the on-the-ground reality. Many full-time journalists earn well below the N70,000 ($51.36) national minimum wage approved by the Nigerian government.
One of them is a 28-year-old broadcaster whose monthly take-home of N50,000 ($36.69) barely lasts a few days. “I survive through careful budgeting, taking on small freelance media tasks like voice-overs, event anchoring, and other side engagements,” the journalist who works in a radio station in Nigeria’s South-west says.
Their 30-year-old colleague, who earns the same amount, does not plan to leave or switch to a better-paying job because journalism gives him “purpose beyond the paycheck.”
Low wages affect journalists across the country, but the problem is most prevalent in the broadcast sector, especially within Northern radio stations, where pay falls below half the minimum wage.
Two journalists who work for different radio stations in Nigeria’s North-west expressed their frustration at earning N30,000 ($22) and N40,000 ($29.35) respectively. However, the 28 and 33-year-olds are thankful that the paltry pay comes in regularly. That is not the reality for some others.
While these four journalists, who are still in their prime, decided to stay, many others did not. About 67 per cent of journalists aged 18 to 34 spend barely five years on the job, survey data show.
A 2025 publication by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) also documents the predicament of professional journalists who work every day of the year but struggle to pay house rent.
To supplement their meagre salaries, former journalists who responded to the survey designed for this report turn to multiple income streams. 38 per cent established side businesses, 36 per cent engaged in freelancing, and 32 per cent provide public relations consulting. Most concerning, 14 per cent admit to accepting money, commonly known as “brown envelope”, to stay afloat.
Lekan Otufodunrin, the executive director of Media Career Services, a media development organisation, mentors young journalists and provides support early in their careers. To manage journalists’ anxiety about low pay, he offers a long-term vision, using real success stories to convince them that journalism could be a necessary “stepping stone” toward other career goals.
“People need to be convinced by real examples, and each time we do that, their anxiety is not as bad as it used to be,” Otufodunrin said.
To address this problem, the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) is canvassing support for a Media Enhancement Bill to enhance the labour rights and privileges of journalists.
“We have one or two [National Assembly] members we have identified, and they have agreed to sponsor the bill. We hope and pray that, at the end of the day, the bill will scale through,” says the union’s president, Alhassan Yahaya.
However, the issue is bigger than the proposed solution. While implementation might be achievable in government-owned outlets, compliance in the private sector, which constitutes the majority of Nigerian media, might be difficult.
To surmount this challenge, the NUJ is proposing dialogue. “They have their own union, so we are trying to see how we can sit down and discuss,” says Mr Yahaya. “Once we have what is implemented by the federal and state governments, we will examine it and see how they can adapt those policies so that they can improve the welfare of journalists in Nigeria.”
