Ake 2025: What is Truth?

The International Journalism Handbook describes truth as a “judgment that accurately describes, or corresponds with, the way the world actually is.” From a media and journalistic perspective, “truth” is generally defined as the “best obtainable version of the truth” based on verifiable facts and rigorous reporting standards. Thus, telling the truth, reporting it and distributing it is one of the core ethics  of media and journalism. But, in recent years, there has been a dearth of truth telling, reporting and distribution in local and global media spaces and platforms. This formed the basis of some of the curated panel sessions at the 13th edition of the Ake Arts and Book Festival where Nigerian and non-Nigerian writers and festival attendees converged from 20th to 22nd of November 2025, engaged in spirited conversations. Themed “Reclaiming Truth”, the three-day festival featured panel sessions that tried answering this singular question: what is truth? 

This noble attempt motivated multiple panels that featured media practitioners, journalists and writers whose creative and journalistic productions challenge constituted authority. The panel sessions, “Whose Truth Is It Anyways?”  featuring Dipo Faloyin, Sonia Faleiro, Isa Sanusi and moderated by Ayisha Osori and “What Is Truth?” Moderated  by Dr. Olaokun Soyinka and featuring Adania Shibli and Kunle Ajibade, explored the nuances of truth and authenticity in the face of tyranny. “Global Media and Selective Empathy”, featuring Adrian Harewood, Zeinab M. Salih, and Jonas Kiriko, moderated by Joseph Ike, and the Fatima Zahra-moderated panel, “Mainstream Media and the Loss of Trust” had Tolu Ogunlesi, Colombe Schneck and Myroslav Laiuk as panelists.

The Whose-Truth-Is-It-Anyways-panel reflected on the rise of disinformation, contested history and whose voices and platforms define what truth is. The panelists, Sanusi, the Country Director for Amnesty International Nigeria, Faloyin, formerly a senior editor at VICE and the author of Africa Is Not a Country and Faleiro, known for her coverage of social justice, gender, marginalized communities in South Asia and the author of  The Good Girls: An Ordinary Killing, brought undeniable insight into the discourse due to their decades-long careers as journalists. Their panel interrogated the role of power in shaping narratives and unpacked the urgent need for truth in the pursuit of social justice and accountability. What was missing in this panel is the attention mainly placed on unethical and unprofessional media platforms, without highlighting those who practised ethical media. 

Rarely is there an African country that isn’t fractured by internal or external war, crisis, or violence. The social, economic, and political landscape of African countries like Sudan, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) , Somalia, Nigeria, and other African countries have been monopolised by displacement, terrorism, insurgencies, violence, and decades-long conflict. The civil war in Sudan has been said to have created the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement crisis, with tens of thousands killed and over 12 million people displaced. The death tolls can be contested but the unprecedented killing cannot.  Sudanese people have lost their lives and dreams to the political tussle between two generals -Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This full-scale civil war across African countries rarely gets the attention of global media outlets. Thus, the Joseph-Ike-moderated panel was tasked with challenging this deep-seated selective media coverage and how international media frames human suffering. This panel had the DRC-based environmental and investigative journalist Kiriko, Faleiro, and Canadian journalist and Associate Professor of Journalism at Carleton University, Adrian Harewood engaged in conversations about why conflicts in Europe dominate headlines while African tragedies are scantily covered. This selective global media coverage dehumanizes African victims of war and reduces accountability that media attention and pressure can bring to government and armed groups. The panelists’ critique and conversation around this identifiable discriminative coverage informed festival attendees and media practitioners about global media power play and the need to find ways to report African issues and crises. Faleiro posited that a way Africans can put their truth out is by putting names to victims of this violence and wars. 

Soyinka-moderated “What is Truth?” sat firmly on some of the festival’s core subjects: how do you tell the truth in the face of political tyranny and violence? The responsibility of journalists and writers in boldly reporting and asserting the truth, and ensure personal safety. The panel had Palestinian author, essayist, and academic, Shibli whose book Minor Detail which follows two parallel timelines—one detailing the rape and murder of a Bedouin girl by Israeli soldiers in 1949, and the other following a young woman in modern-day Ramallah investigating the crime and Nigerian journalist, editor, and author, Ajibade whose journalistic work in 1995 got him illegally arrested, secretly tried by a special military tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment under the General Sanni Abacha‘s military rule. This panel examined how journalistic work and literary productions can examine truth, challenge political violence, and, importantly, what’s at stake when truth is presented in a tyrannical state, either under military dictatorship or civilian rule. The panelists shared anecdotes from their personal lives in their questioning of constituted authority. Self preservation, as the panel suggested, isn’t a betrayal of one’s political convictions. It’s like the Yoruba said, a chance to fight the battle another day. 

The last panel session titled “Mainstream Media and the Loss of Trust” featured Nigerian journalist, Ogunlesi, French journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker Schneck, and Ukrainian writer, poet, and war documentarian, Laiuk, and was moderated by Nigerian journalist, Zahra. Though the panel featured international journalists, it tilted heavily towards questioning how the unethical media practices of Nigerian legacy and mainstream media have led to the loss of public trust in the media. As suggested by Ogunlesi, these platforms sacrificed their decades-long credibility for capitalist pressure: getting online views and attention. This has made them embrace bias and clickbaiting headlines  leading to public distrust, bias and misinformation. The identifiable bias and unethical practices of Nigerian and foreign mainstream media houses like Punch, Guardian, BBC, Fox, The Economist, and others were scrutinized and fiercely critiqued. 

These depth-filled panels reflected and interrogated the media and its roles in rebuilding public trust and accountability, battling misinformation, and encouraging enlightening public conversations around national issues. True to its intention, Ake curated a space where substantial conversation around truth could be held. But, now that the festival has ended, how do these illuminating conversations move outside the festival venue? How do individual attendees take these engaging, revealing, and important conversations into their private and public lives? This might not be a question or responsibility that Ake, as a literary festival, should be burdened with, but it’s worth asking.