By Yemi Farounbi
Nigeria does not just need more journalists.
Nigeria needs guerrilla journalists.
Journalists who are consumed by hunger and passion for change.
Men and women who refuse to be domesticated by the comforts of the newsroom or the invitations of the powerful.
For too long, much of our media has been quietly absorbed into the status quo.
Through pacification.
Through bureaucratization.
Through brown envelopes, political appointments, and advertising strings.
The result?
A press that often reports events but is afraid to challenge structures.
A press that analyses policies but rarely confronts the deep injustices behind them.
A press that sometimes becomes the choir of those in power, instead of the microphone of the people.
Guerrilla journalism is different.
It is journalism that:
• Refuses capture – Journalists who cannot be bought by contracts, threatened by advertisers, or silenced by access.
• Challenges the Constitution and the system – Not just who is in office, but how office is structured, how power is used, and how citizens are shut out.
• Demands economic justice – Exposing corruption, waste, and policies that deepen poverty instead of alleviating it.
• Questions political culture – The godfatherism, vote-buying, ethnic manipulation, religious exploitation, and abuse of security forces.
• Reclaims our values and stories – Confronting cultural practices that entrench inequality, silence the weak, or normalize impunity.
Nigeria needs journalists who are:
• Anxious and restless for reform.
• Determined to crusade for constitutional, economic, political, and cultural change.
• Ready to go beyond press statements and government briefings to the streets, the communities, the forgotten corners of this country.
• Willing to investigate, expose, and persist even when threatened or ignored.
This is not a call to reckless activism.
It is a call to fearless professionalism.
Guerrilla journalism is not about abandoning ethics; it is about fulfilling them—placing truth above convenience, public interest above personal gain, and justice above comfort.
In an age of disinformation, propaganda, and weaponized media, Nigeria’s hope lies in a new breed of journalists who will not be neutral in the face of injustice, who will not be silent in the presence of oppression, and who will not trade their conscience for proximity to power.
What Nigeria needs today is clear:
• Journalists who are ready to fight—not with guns, but with facts.
• Not with violence, but with courage.
• Not with hatred, but with a stubborn love for the truth and for the people.
That is guerrilla journalism.
And that is the mission before the Nigerian press today.
Ambassador (Dr) Yemi Faroubi is an Elder Stateman and former Nigeria Ambassador to the Philippines
