Daily Trust apologised on Wednesday to the Federal government of Nigeria for publishing an inaccurate report on the Samoa Agreement in July.
The report, headlined “LGBT: Nigeria Signs $150 billion Samoa Deal”, was criticised by Nigerian officials for being misleading and non-factual.
The Nigerian government lodged a formal complaint with the National Media Complaints Commission (NMCC), an independent Ombudsman. The government said the report on the Samoa agreement was false and designed to create confusion in the land.
After weeks of investigation, including hearing from the parties involved, the NMCC ruled that the Daily Trust report was “inaccurate” and fell short of the high journalistic standards to which all newspapers should adhere.
“We find that the Daily Trust violated Article 2.3 of the Revised Code of Ethics, 2022 as it did not discharge its duty to report as accurately as possible. To the extent that the Daily Trust did not make any appreciable effort to establish the relevant facts in its reporting and seemed to substitute the opinions of its sources for the facts, we find that it breached Article 2.8 of the Revised Code of Ethics, 2022,” the NMCC said.
“Overall, the reporting offered by the Daily Trust fell short of the standards expected in the journalism profession as contained in the 2022 Revised Code of Ethics for Nigerian Journalists. We also find that its reporting on such a subject with significant sensitivity in Nigeria was below its acclaimed professional standard.”
Daily Trust Apology
“We accept the verdict of the NMCC without any equivocation,” Daily Trust said in an editor’s note on Wednesday. “We apologise to the Federal Government for any inconveniences the story might have caused to it. We also apologise to our readers and the public for getting the story wrong in the first place.”
In its 19-page report, the NMCC said it should not have taken more than two months for the Daily Trust to determine that its action was blameworthy and take remedial steps in accordance with the requirements of the 2022 Revised Code of Conduct for Nigerian Journalists.
In the Samoa report, Daily Trust claimed that the “Samoa Agreement signed by the Nigerian government in June included clauses that mandated Nigeria to support the rights of the LGBTQ community.”
The Nigerian government, however, denied that the agreement had any such clause and a fact-check showed that while the European Union initially wanted the clause included, the final version signed by Nigeria and other countries had no such agreement.
In its editorial note, Daily Trust said it has taken more steps to improve its editorial mechanisms and enhance their effectiveness.
“Like newspapers all over the world, we sometimes make mistakes or get some facts wrong, which explains why even before the advent of the National Ombudsman, we have had internal ones, in the persons of late Hajia Bilkisu Yusuf (2007) and Mr. Dan Agbese (2015). We take this process of prompting and self-correction seriously.”
