Osinbajo: One can’t make decent living as a journalist in Nigeria

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday said the journalism profession cannot guarantee a “decent living” in Nigeria.

He said this while declaring open the retreat of the state house press corps in Abuja with the theme ‘Journalists and Retirement Plans’.

The Vice-President said to avoid the pains of working and going home without benefits, all employees, not only of the media, should be compelled to join the government’s contributory pension scheme.

“I realised first of all that this is not a profession from which one could make a decent living in the first place unless you find a really good way of doing so,” he said.

“But more importantly for me was the fact that you are just on your own. Journalism as a profession is so wide open. There are a few reasons in my view why remuneration is poor.

“The first is that it is just simply cheating. There are owners of media that are just cheats. They just want to get something from nothing and that is not uncommon, it is a general malaise. It is not necessarily restricted to the media.

“It is also the same in the legal profession. There many lawyers, if they tell you what they earn, you will certainly not want to be a lawyer.

“Entry into journalism is not vigorously enforced. Most professions are able to pay better because there are entry requirements that are rigorously enforced. Perhaps not the case in journalism and for good reason.

“There are those who are formally trained as journalists but the profession will admit anybody at all even if you are not formally trained as a journalist and that is even becoming more so now with social media platforms, with blogs.”

He called on media practitioners to seek self-improvement in and outside the profession to become sector experts and withstand the challenges after practice.