Addressing goings-on within Nigerian popular culture oeuvre can feel like an unending ritual of proselytising. The same talking points recur only for our consensus call-to-action to be ignored. Sometimes people have their say, and the law or whatever ethical outcome sought for, prevails. Other times, apathy combines with a multiplicity of societal factors for a net-negative result. In every one of these instances, the media plays a paramount role of directing the flow of discourse, ultimately influencing how people think, react to, and process available information.
Traditionally, this duty was the exclusive preserve of select formally—and sometimes informally—trained media professionals who served a population with limited reach. Chances that a random person’s musings in Delta would directly contribute to office discourse in far away Nassarawa were minimal, fortunately declining in the 2010s as the digital divide shrunk. According to the Nigerian Communications Commission, about 48.81 percent of the population (140 million people) had access to the internet as of August 2025, 50 million more than the figure reported in 2015. What that means is that new media i.e. media such as the internet, radio, newspapers etc delivered digitally, now plays a larger role in information dissemination. As such, professional lines are blurred. Formal and informal training, especially in ethics, are limited due to the democratisation of access.
This examination is pertinent in the face of recent events like the appearance of convicted Nollywood actor Olanrewaju James, popularly known as Baba Ijesha, on two different talk shows: actress Dr. Biola Adebayo’s Talk-To-B Podcast (Episode 201) and popular Juju singer Yinka Ayefele’s Fresh FM show, Opeyemi. For context, Baba Ijesha was convicted by the Lagos State High Court on 14 July 2022 of sexual assault and indecent treatment of a child in 2013-2014 and April 2021. This case drew a lot of public attention at the time as Nigerians called for judgement in the face of damning CCTV footage. He was subsequently sentenced to 5 years imprisonment for sexual assault and 3 years for indecent treatment of a child. A 28 June 2024 Court of Appeal judgement acquitted him of the 2013-2014 charges but affirmed his conviction. He was released on Friday 14, November 2025.
In both interviews, which are the actor’s first public appearances since the arrest, he gave conflicting accounts of the situation. He accused fellow actress and comedienne Damilola “Princess” Adekoya of ‘luring him to her residence’ and deliberately pairing him with the then 14-year old victim, as part of the script for a film about rape supposedly supported by the Lagos State Government. He also claimed that he was manipulated to give a confession. In the now deleted interview with Biola Adebayo, Baba Ijesha repeatedly alluded to false accusations, focusing on his contributions to the industry and numerous apologies from Princess and others in the industry. If his interviewer had any reservations about the accuracy of these statements, she didn’t show it, instead opting for leading questions about religious beliefs and other inconsequential details. His conversationconversation with Yinka Ayefele wasn’t so different with the exception of indirect questions about the ordeal. In both cases, the innocence narrative remained the same.
Nigeria is a free country and despite his registered sex-offender status, Baba Ijesha has a right to air his opinions. That’s true. He has a right to express himself however he deems fit, in so much as that’s within the dictates of the law. A colleague, Yomi Fabiyi, had repeatedly clamoured for his release with similar claims of malfeasance against Princess and individuals in the media. He also claimed that the Court of Appeal cleared the accused of all wrongdoing, although that has since been debunked by the Honorable Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Lagos State, Mr Lawal Pedro, SAN. Pushback against his appearances aren’t about denying him the right to his constitutionally-backed freedom, a crusade to cancel culture or anti-rehabilitation advocacy.
On the contrary, it’s about recognising the power of new media and putting that influence to ethical use. Extending an invite to such a controversial figure should be accompanied by a fine line approach to questioning. A common sense approach, if you will. It’s recognising how these conversations and viral clips shape perception of societal issues, and transforming that into the quality of discourse that goes down during these segments. Ours is a society dealing with an overwhelming recurrence of sexual assault and harrassment cases against minors and adults alike. In fact, just days before Baba Ijesha’s Talk-With-B episode took over the internet, there was rightful outrage over the harrassment and alleged rape of young women as part of the Alue-Do Festival in Ozoro, Delta State. And were it not for the sustained online campaign, the situation could have been much worse. This is even as the Nigerian Police has arrested a mere 15 people, claiming that “no formal report of rape had been made in connection with the festival.” To then have such influential platforms utilise their reach as disturbingly as they did, shames the efforts of ordinary individuals with even less influence fighting for these causes.
You might posit that these podcasts and creator pages are just one more in the ever-expanding throng, discounting their overall impact. That would be tantamount to rejecting tangible data. On YouTube alone, the Talk-With-B episode had over 197,000 views in less than 72 hours. The majority of the over 1,900 YouTube comments were positive wishes for the embattled actor. Baba Ijesha’s name attained a peak popularity of 100 on the Google Trends Chart barely up to a day after the interview premiered. Bloggers and their new age ‘banger boy’ counterparts cut and re-circulated sections of the video on X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and elsewhere to millions of views. If the interviewer had bothered to interrogate the subject properly, some of these viewers would see differently, understanding the irrefutable nature of his conviction. Understanding that it’s not about false accusations or industry politics but a young girl’s violated rights. Rather than making the entire conversation an arena for grandstanding.
The phrase “He who controls the media controls the mind”, commonly attributed to American philosopher, political activist and foremost linguist Noah Chomsky, best captures this writer’s sentiment. Today, we are the media, and equally the minds influenced. Seismic events like the October 20, 2020 Lekki Toll Gate Massacre show the extent to which new media determines public perception and reception to societal issues. This is even with the distortion from Government-controlled traditional media. From a more everyday perspective, you have a platform like Jola Ayeye and Feyikemi Abudu’s I Said What I Said (ISWIS) Podcast exposing Nigerians and international listeners to pressing societal issues, a call-back to the heydays of nightly talk shows like the Teju Baby Face Show or regional-favorite Nkan Bẹ. A May 2025 episode of the ISWIS Podcast featuring two former debt collectors helped spotlight the realities of loan sharks and the never-ending debt cycle many Nigerians face. And that’s just one of many podcasts, Substacks, blogs, social media pages etc. in the New Media landscape. The writing isn’t on the wall. It’s right in front of our irises, a bold warning about the narratives we breathe life into.
Young Nigerians in new media aren’t a distinct species of human from practitioners in traditional media. We are just as susceptible to the same flaws. Our desire for larger audiences and market share is the same. We need not shun controversial topics altogether, as printing only what people want to hear is grossly anti-Orwellian and anti-journalistic. But just as some of these traditional media outlets built their brands on well-guided narratives, even when fielding unpopular characters and topics, we also can, and should, uphold ethical standards.
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