About the MSI
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IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country's media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and began studying Africa in 2006.
MSI Overview [8] | Africa [9] | Asia [10] | Europe & Eurasia [11] | Middle East & North Africa [12]
MSI Methodology [13]
Download Complete Nigeria Chapter (PDF): 2012 [14] | 2010 [15] | 2009 [16] | 2008 [17] | 2006/7 [18] | 2006/7 (français) [19]
MSI Nigeria – 2012 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 2.19
A heightened state of insecurity has dogged Nigeria over the last year, impacting seriously the media both directly and indirectly. By far the most serious manifestation of the problem was the terrorist attacks unleashed on the country by the Islamic militant group known as Boko Haram. The group intensified its attacks over the last year, detonating bombs in public places and on private property in various cities in the northern part of Nigeria, as well as in Abuja. In other instances, members of the group carried out gun attacks in similar places. The situation took a dangerous turn in 2012 when media organizations were deliberately targeted in these attacks, ostensibly as a result of unfavorable media coverage of the group’s activities.
For instance, on April 26, 2012, the Abuja office of Leaders and Company Limited, publishers of ThisDay newspaper, was attacked by a suicide bomber. Simultaneously, in Kaduna in north-western Nigeria, a building that houses the offices of three daily newspapers, Daily Sun, ThisDay, and The Moment was also bombed. Five people were reported to have been killed as a result. Prior to the attack, on March 11, 2012, the group had threatened to take measures against three newspapers for allegedly misreporting its declarations and for reports favorable of the government or security agents or both. In October 2011, Alhaji Zakariya Isa, a cameraman with the federal government-owned Nigeria Television Authority, was killed by three gunmen suspected to be members of Boko Haram at his residence in Maiduguri.
On May 1, 2012, the group posted a video on YouTube in which it warned of more attacks on media organizations, naming the media institutions that will be the targets in such future attacks; it also claimed responsibility for the April 26 attacks in the same video.
Over the last few years, there have also a number of journalists killed in suspicious circumstances; these cases remain unresolved. In virtually all cases, the police claim that the journalists were killed during robberies and they have been unable to solve them.
All of these cases continue to cause fear and anxiety within the media community, serve to muzzle reporting, and dampen reporting that would better serve the information needs of citizens.
Nigeria’s overall score remains almost identical to 2010. However, individual objective scores did move, and changes offset each other. For example, Objective 1, Freedom of Speech, increased by 0.40 and Objective 2, Professional Journalism, increased by 0.17. On the other side, Objective 4, Business Management, lost ground by 0.36 and Objective 5, Supporting Institutions, showed a small decrease of 0.11.