The Power of Meticulous and Transparent Reporting!
Nigeria – FIJ: Going Undercover
The Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) is a non-profit newsroom in Nigeria committed to holding power to account through deep investigative reporting. FIJ focuses on corruption, social justice, and systemic failures. They aim to ease and influence their audience’s everyday decision-making by bypassing propaganda and delivering factual information through stories that drive institutional change and spark public discourse.
- Nigeria
- FIJ
- 2025-2026
- Nigeria
- FIJ
- 2025-2026
MAIN REVENUE MODEL
> The Story
An FIJ undercover reporter posing as a victim of an erroneous bank transfer approached a customary court in Abuja, Nigeria, on July 7, 2025. Without presenting a shred of supporting evidence, the reporter walked away with a signed ex parte order bearing Magistrate Muhammed Sulyman Ola’s signature, directing First Bank to reverse a fictitious ₦300,000 transfer. The total cost: ₦50,000, less than Nigeria’s national minimum wage. When FIJ later verified with the bank, the bank’s staff confirmed that the transaction did not exist in their records.
The sting was not an isolated incident. It exposed a systemic pattern of ex-parte order abuse in places such as Nasarawa State — a state that had already earned a troubling reputation for judicial shortcuts. The investigation laid bare how emergency court orders, intended only for situations of irreversible urgency, had become a commodity available to the highest bidder.
Impact Summary:
External Network Impact
The investigation built on and amplified prior accountability work. An earlier case in which a Nasarawa magistrate had issued an unlawful arrest order against Lagos resident Chioma Okoli (who had written a Facebook review criticising a food brand) had resulted in that magistrate, Emmanuel Jatau, being demoted and stripped of powers in January 2025 after her lawyer petitioned the Nasarawa Judicial Service Commission. Despite this, FIJ's new sting showed the system had not been fixed, and the new exposé forced further institutional action. In February 2025, the Nasarawa JSC had already issued a directive explicitly barring magistrates from granting orders to freeze accounts or demand financial details from banks. FIJ's follow-up investigation demonstrated that those rules were being flouted in real time, creating undeniable pressure on regulators and the courts to act, transforming a paper directive into an enforced standard.
Individual Impact
The story drew widespread pickup across Nigerian media, elevating public awareness about a practice previously hidden in plain sight. Legal practitioners, consumer advocates, and bank customers across the country now have a documented precedent to cite when challenging abusive court orders.
External Institutional Impact
The investigation was concluded when a landmark ruling by Justice Ibrahim Kala of the Federal High Court in Lagos on October 10, 2025, reiterated a similar 2020 ruling. The judge declared that banks must flatly refuse to honour ex-parte orders from magistrates, area, or customary courts that seek to restrict or reverse account transactions — a judicial firewall protecting millions of Nigerians from the exact abuse FIJ documented. The Nasarawa State Judicial Service Commission approved the dismissal of five judicial officers and the suspension of three others, including a magistrate, while FIJ was investigating. Offences cited included fraudulently issuing ex-parte orders and forging a judge's signature — directly echoing the misconduct FIJ had exposed. At the national level, the National Judicial Council (NJC), under Chief Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, intensified its integrity reforms, announcing that all future judicial appointees would undergo public scrutiny before taking the bench. In a parallel sweep, 34 of 62 nominees to the Federal High Court were disqualified after failing newly introduced integrity screening, signalling a system-wide shift towards accountability that FIJ's undercover reporting helped accelerate.
