As Nigeria prepares for the 2027 general elections, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has reminded television and radio stations to comply with the Nigeria Broadcasting Code, particularly in news, current affairs, and political programmes.
The directive emphasises neutrality, fairness, balance, and professionalism while warning broadcasters against allowing their platforms to be used for hate speech, incitement, or divisive rhetoric. It also makes clear that broadcasters cannot transfer editorial responsibility for inappropriate content to guests or contributors.
Ordinarily, this would be another debate about broadcast regulation and press freedom. But the controversy comes at a moment when Nigeria’s political communication ecosystem has fundamentally changed. Television and radio no longer enjoy a monopoly over political discourse.
Political conversations now occur on X, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, podcasts, and other social platforms where editorial regulation is weaker and different incentives determine what millions of people see and believe.
The real question, therefore, is not simply whether broadcasters should be more neutral ahead of the 2027 elections.
It is whether regulating traditional media addresses an information ecosystem where influence is rapidly being shaped by algorithms, virality, and personalities rather than by broadcast institutions alone.
Regulating Broadcasters in a Changing Media Landscape
NBC maintains that it is simply upholding the principles of responsible broadcasting and fulfilling the mandate for which it was established in 1992.
As social media has grown and election periods have become polarised, concerns over misinformation, hate speech, and inflammatory rhetoric have also intensified. During the 2019 election campaign, the term “hate speech” became a recurring feature of national political discourse.
By the 2023 elections, the information environment had become even more fraught, with the widespread circulation of misinformation, slander, divisive slurs, and other forms of inflammatory content.
Viewed from our election history, the directive is intended to curb a recurrence of such incidents before they escalate into threats to public order. Yet that justification has not prevented criticism.
Media and civil society organisations argue that the directive risks encouraging self-censorship and narrowing editorial independence.
The Social-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, described it as a dangerous attempt to impose prior censorship on the media.
The Nigeria Union of Journalists called it “a veiled attempt to gag the media.” The union argued that political reporting and current affairs analysis require robust engagement and contextual interpretation, warning that reducing presenters to neutral conveyors of information risks undermining editorial independence and the media’s watchdog role.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar on his X handle similarly criticized it as “yet another troubling attempt to muzzle the media.”
But the debate may be overlooking an important transformation and assumes that traditional media remain the primary spaces where political opinion is formed.
Increasingly, that is no longer the case.
The Gatekeepers Have Changed
Nearly two decades ago, political communication in Nigeria passed through a relatively small number of gatekeepers.
Politicians sought airtime on television and radio, purchased newspaper space, and relied on invitations to current affairs programmes to reach the public. Editors and broadcasters largely determined which issues entered national conversation and how they were framed, while young people were mostly audiences rather than participants.
One of the earliest demonstrations that this ecosystem was changing came during the 2012 Occupy Nigeria protests. Hashtags and digital conversations became powerful tools for mobilisation on Twitter (as it was then called), Facebook and on Nairaland, allowing citizens to organise, debate, and sustain civic action beyond the confines of traditional media.
The protests showed that political participation no longer depended solely on television studios, radio programmes, or newspaper editorials. Since then, online political discourse has evolved from moments of mobilisation into an everyday feature of Nigeria’s political landscape.
Political conversations now happen across social media platforms, where millions of Nigerians, particularly young people, consume, interpret, and debate public affairs in real time.
Platforms such as TikTok, once associated primarily with entertainment and personal expression, have also become arenas for discussing governance, creating political content, questioning public officials, critiquing policies, and debating elections.
In some cases, political narratives originate online before they are debated or even verified by traditional media outlets.
As this digital culture has expanded, so too has a new class of political voices. Rather than waiting for invitations to radio or television programmes, they have built their own audiences through podcasts, YouTube channels, TikTok videos, X Spaces, and other digital platforms.
They analyse government policies, endorse candidates, challenge official narratives, and shape political conversations for hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of followers.
In many respects, they are becoming the new gatekeepers of Nigeria’s political discourse.
Why Broadcasters Are Easier to Regulate
The emergence of these new gatekeepers reveals an important asymmetry in Nigeria’s political information ecosystem. Traditional broadcasters and digital creators may both shape public opinion, but they operate under fundamentally different systems.
Television and radio stations exist within a clearly defined regulatory framework. They require licences to operate, are subject to the Nigeria Broadcasting Code, and can be sanctioned, fined, or even suspended for violating established standards.
Their programmes pass through editorial structures where producers, broadcasters, editors, and management bear responsibility for what goes on air, requiring fact-checking and compliance with professional and legal obligations.
Digital platforms, on the other hand, operate differently. A podcaster, YouTuber, TikTok creator, or X commentator publishes political content without passing through those editorial layers.
The distinction, however, is not only of regulation but also of speed. Traditional broadcasting is built around verification and editorial responsibility, both of which require time.
This changing information ecosystem is reflected in how audiences consume political news. As George Essien, Broadcaster and Guinness World Record Holder For Longest Radio Talkshow, observed in an interview for this article, “many stories now break online before they reach radio, television, or newspapers. Social media has become the primary entry point for political information”.
Rather than waiting for scheduled news bulletins, audiences now encounter political information first on social media, where content circulates instantly and often without the editorial checks associated with traditional broadcasting.
Oma Jude, a television broadcaster with NTA, describes today’s information environment as uneven: “The unevenness is really seen in terms of speed and risk. Broadcasters carry legal and reputation risk in real time; hence we have to be careful what goes on air. Social media commentators, on the other hand, carry risk later, if at all.”
Digital platforms, by contrast, reward immediacy. A creator with a large following who reacts to a government policy within minutes is often more likely to capture public attention than a broadcaster who spends hours verifying facts and preparing a balanced report.
And public opinion is frequently shaped when people first encounter an issue, not when they later receive additional context or verification. If millions watch a viral video on a national issue or read a widely shared X thread before the matter is broadcast on traditional media, those initial impressions may frame how subsequent information is interpreted.
This explains why many of these digital gatekeepers now wield considerable political influence. Their influence stems not only from what they say but from their ability to shape what people discuss before traditional media enters the conversation.
The result is a media ecosystem in which the most tightly regulated actors are no longer necessarily the most influential.
Political influence is now seen across networks of individual creators, platforms, and online communities that operate according to a different logic. That logic is not driven by editorial judgement, but by visibility, and in this digital age, visibility is also determined by algorithms.
When Virality Becomes Credibility
The rise of these new political gatekeepers did not happen by accident. It is the product of the systems that now determine what millions of social media users see every day: algorithms.
In the era when newspapers and traditional media dominated, editors decided which stories deserved prominence.
Today, recommendation algorithms on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and X determine what appears on people’s screens. Every click, comment, share, repost, and second spent watching a video becomes data that tells the platform what users are likely to engage with next. Visibility is therefore shaped less by editorial judgement than by engagement.
This operates within what scholars describe as the attention economy: a system defined by the scarcity of human attention, where digital platforms compete to capture and retain a limited resource. Because attention is limited, platforms must continuously optimise for content that can hold it.
It is this logic that shapes algorithm design. As former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris observed, we live in a city called the attention economy. In this system, algorithms are not primarily assessing whether content is true or verified; they are optimising for what is most likely to be watched, reacted to, or shared.
This is where emotional amplification comes in. People are naturally more likely to engage with content that makes them angry, fearful, amused, controversial, or morally outraged than with content that is cautious or nuanced. Algorithms learn from that behaviour.
When thousands rapidly engage with an emotional political post, video, or podcast clip, the platform interprets that engagement as a signal to distribute it to even larger audiences, effectively amplifying those emotions. In turn, creators learn that content capable of provoking strong emotional reactions is more likely to be rewarded with visibility, creating an incentive to produce similar material.
The consequence is that political messages carrying certainty, outrage, or strong identity appeals often travel much faster than measured analysis or carefully verified reporting. A sensational claim, an angry livestream, or a provocative sixty-second video can dominate public conversation and trend for hours or even days.
Traditional media follows a different logic: verification comes before publication. On many digital platforms, the sequence is reversed: content is published instantly, spreads rapidly through networks of users, and is only later verified, corrected, or debunked.
This reshapes not only how information spreads but also how credibility is formed. In the heydays of traditional media, credibility often produced visibility because institutions earned public trust over time.
On social media, visibility has become a source of credibility. Some social media users may assume that because a claim repeatedly appears on their feeds, attracts millions of views, or is shared by personalities they trust, it must be true or widely accepted.
Algorithms, therefore, do more than determine what people see. They can also influence what people discuss, what they believe deserves attention, and sometimes even what they come to regard as credible.
Today’s political reality is therefore shaped not only by what is true, but also by what is seen, shared, and discussed the most. In such an environment, virality can begin to function as a substitute for verification.
When Trust Shifts from Institutions to Personalities
Perhaps the most significant transformation in Nigeria’s political information ecosystem is not technological but psychological: a shift in how credibility is created and trusted.
For decades, credibility was attached primarily to institutions. The evening television bulletin, the morning newspaper, or the radio current affairs programme carried authority because they represented organisations built on editorial processes, professional standards, and institutional accountability.
Today, that relationship is changing. Trust is migrating from institutions to online personalities. Audiences follow podcast hosts, YouTubers, TikTok creators, X commentators, and digital influencers whose voices they identify with and agree with.
In many cases, they are not just consuming information; they are forming emotional connections with individuals and communities.
This shift reflects growing skepticism towards traditional media, where sections of the public accuse some outlets of reflecting the interests of owners or political actors.
Even if these perceptions are not entirely accurate, this skepticism has pushed many citizens towards alternative political voices. Once audiences begin engaging with those voices, digital platforms repeatedly recommend similar creators and content, reinforcing familiarity. Over time, repeated exposure can evolve into trust, and trust into loyalty.
These online personalities also communicate differently from traditional broadcasters. They speak conversationally rather than formally, express frustration rather than restraint, and often analyse politics in the same language and manner many Nigerians use in homes, markets, buses, and workplaces.
Their appeal lies not only in the information they provide but in the authenticity they appear to project. They are perceived as being “real” and willing to say what others will not say.
Traditional broadcasters, however, operate within stricter professional environments shaped by editorial oversight, institutional accountability, and regulatory standards.
As broadcast journalist Samuel Williams observed during an interview for this article, political programmes are often subjected to heightened editorial scrutiny, with presenters feeling “the pressure of seeming restrictions.”
This contrast helps explain why emotion has become a dominant currency in political communication. Audiences are not always drawn to cautious analysis; they are drawn to voices that reflect their frustrations, hopes, and identities even if it is raw and unpolished.
In such an environment, emotional resonance carries more persuasive power than institutional authority, and familiarity can mean more than verification.
The broader challenge is that political truth is now shaped in a fragmented ecosystem where credibility flows through algorithms, personalities, and online communities, especially among younger Nigerians, much more than traditional institutions.
Can Political Journalism Ever Be Truly Neutral?
If algorithms reward emotion over nuance and virality over verification, the debate surrounding the NBC directive raises a deeper question than whether broadcasters should avoid expressing personal opinions. It forces us to ask if neutrality itself still means what it once did in a now polarised and algorithm-driven environment.
For decades, neutrality has been regarded as one of journalism’s defining ideals. Broadcasters are expected to be fair, balanced, and professional, particularly during election periods when political tensions are high. On paper, this involves presenting all sides of an issue so audiences can form their own judgments.
The debate extends far beyond Nigeria. Across media houses around the world, journalists have long disagreed on whether neutrality means giving equal weight to every position or remaining faithful to verified facts.
Veteran international journalist Christiane Amanpour has long argued that truthful, objective journalism is not neutral, a philosophy she often summarises as “truthful, not neutral.” Her point is that journalists have a duty to pursue and report the truth rather than create a false equivalence between fact and falsehood in the name of balance.
George Essien believes that “Neutrality does not mean silence. Neutrality means fairness.” What matters, he argues, is the consistent application of scrutiny to all, not the avoidance of scrutiny itself.
In practice, however, neutrality is more complex.
Every newsroom makes decisions about which stories to prioritise, which guests to feature, and which facts require scrutiny. These editorial choices inevitably shape public understanding, meaning journalism is not only the transmission of information but also the exercise of judgment.
Yet the challenge today extends beyond newsroom ethics. Traditional journalism now competes in an information environment where many of the most influential political voices do not claim neutrality at all.
Podcast hosts, YouTubers, TikTok creators, and online commentators often succeed precisely because they are emotional, opinionated, and unrestrained in ways institutional broadcasters cannot be under regulatory codes.
This then creates a paradox: the more traditional journalism emphasises caution, verification, neutrality and balance, the more it competes in a digital space that rewards immediacy, certainty, bias and expression of unbridled emotion.
Since this is the new reality, we shouldn’t just ask whether journalism can remain neutral, but whether neutrality alone is enough to sustain relevance in today’s political communication landscape.
Conclusion
The debate over the NBC directive is ultimately about more than broadcasting rules or journalistic neutrality.
It reflects a change in Nigeria’s political communication ecosystem. As influence shifts from newsrooms to algorithms, and from broadcast institutions to online personalities, the question is no longer simply who gets to speak but who citizens choose to believe and why they believe them.
Fortunately, traditional media is not standing still in this shift. Samuel Williams notes that many organisations have integrated social media platforms into their operations in an effort to adapt to a rapidly changing information environment, a move he describes as a form of “survival mode.”
In this age where visibility can shape credibility and emotions appeal more than verification, safeguarding democratic and political discourse requires more than enforcing professional standards on broadcasters. It needs a proper understanding of how political narratives are now produced, amplified, and trusted across digital platforms.
As the 2027 campaigns gather momentum, some of the most influential political conversations will not come from television studios or radio stations, but from millions of smartphones, where algorithms, personalities, and emotion shape what Nigerians see, believe, and share.
