By Dayo Emmanuel
Editor of The Next Nation, Ibanga Isine has said Nigerian journalists are among the best worldwide considering the environment they operate.
He stated this on Monday at the 14th Wole Soyinka Award for Investigative Reporting by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) held in Lagos on Monday.
Isine who won the overall Nigerian Investigative Reporter of the Year award said Nigerian journalists are sacrificing a lot to engage in investigative journalism.
According to him, if Nigerian journalists have necessary facilities and are adequately paid like their foreign counterparts they will do a lot better.
“When people say Nigerian journalists collect brown envelopes, I laugh. We work with bare hands,” Isine stated.
He said his winning report was aimed at exposing systematic extortions and corruption of Nigerian security officials on Nigerian roads.
Isine said the brunt of such corrupt practices are borne by Nigerians in the form of high prices of foodstuffs and high level of frustration in the country.
According to the editor, he posed as an undercover reporter travelling with a trailer for three days from Adamawa to Lagos and counted over 120 police check-points where money was extorted from the traders.
He urged Nigerian journalists to work hard to expose corrupt practices in the country.
“I want to encourage our colleagues to do the needful. We should not allow things to rest; a lot of things are happening.
“Let us rise up to defend this profession and defend Nigeria because this country belongs to all of us,” he said while dedicating the award to his family.
“I dedicate this award to my child and my wife. They allowed me to go for long following stories and I appreciate them,” he said.