NGE 2026: The Case for Good News – Shettima Asks Editors to Balance the Ledger

ENUGU — If there is a perennial dance in Nigerian politics, it is this: the government asks the press to be patient; the press asks the government to be accountable.

Vice President Kashim Shettima performed his part of the choreography this week at the 2026 All Nigeria Editors Conference in Enugu. In a goodwill message to the gathering — themed, rather grandly, “The Ballot, the Media and the Task of Keeping Democracy Alive” — Shettima urged editors to tell the whole story of the economy: not just the hardship, but what the administration insists is progress.

The media, Shettima said, has a responsibility to scrutinize government. It also, in his telling, has a responsibility to ensure that Nigerians receive the full picture.

The picture, as the Vice President painted it, is one of difficult reforms finally steadying. He cited the second-quarter 2026 numbers: 4.43 per cent growth, up from 4.23 per cent in the corresponding quarter of 2025. Growth, he said, was recorded across agriculture, manufacturing, oil and gas, and services. Inflation, that stubborn metric of everyday life, has moderated from the peaks of the early reform period.

“These numbers give us reason for confidence, but not for complacency,” Shettima said.

It was a careful calibration. The administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has staked its credibility on reforms that have been, by its own admission, painful. The ultimate test, Shettima conceded, is not to be found in a spreadsheet from the National Bureau of Statistics, but in markets and motor parks — in the cost of living and the purchasing power of ordinary Nigerians.

The stated objective, he said, is to ensure that macroeconomic stability ceases to be abstract: that it translates into jobs, stronger businesses, improved purchasing power, and better living conditions.

Shettima was careful to make room for disagreement. Government and the media will not always agree, he said — nor should they. Disagreement, when it is informed by facts and conducted responsibly, is not a bug in democracy but a feature.

He urged editors to continue interrogating government policies while also reporting areas where progress was being made. The press, after all, earned its billing as the fourth estate precisely because it informs citizens, scrutinizes power, shapes public debate, and preserves what he called the institutional memory of the nation.

There was a note of praise in there as well, for journalists and editors who continue to work despite the sacrifices and pressures that come with the profession in Nigeria — a line that tends to draw knowing nods in any hall of editors.

The timing, Shettima suggested, matters. As Nigeria inches toward another election cycle, the media’s gatekeeping role becomes existential. Citizens, he argued, can only make meaningful choices at the ballot box when they have access to credible information.

And that gate, he warned, is harder to keep than ever. Artificial intelligence, capable of producing convincing falsehoods at unprecedented speed — a synthetic voice in the cadence of a public official, a video that never happened — has made professional journalism, in his words, even more important.

“Remain critical gatekeepers between information and manipulation,” he told the editors.

He commended the Nigerian Guild of Editors for sustaining the conference and for choosing a theme focused on democracy, media responsibility, and the integrity of information.

It was, in the end, a familiar sermon in an unfamiliar moment: give us credit where it is due, keep us honest where we are not, and remember that between the ballot and the courtroom, there is still the newsroom.