INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM IN NIGERIA AND THE POLITICS OF SILENCE: REVISITING THE LETTER BOMB ASSASSINATION OF DELE GIWA.

Abstract

Abstract This study critically examined the nexus between investigative journalism and the politics of silence in Nigeria by revisiting the letter‑bomb assassination of Dele Giwa; it aimed to interrogate competing explanations for the killing, assess its influence on investigative practice and media resistance, and evaluate the implications of institutional silence for press freedom and democratic accountability. Anchored in the Political Economy Theory of the Media and the Social Responsibility Theory of the Press, the research employed a qualitative digital‑ethnographic design and analysed 545 spontaneously generated Facebook comments, of which ≈300 were retained as analytically relevant while ≈245 peripheral remarks were discarded, using iterative inductive–deductive thematic coding, constant comparison and reflexive memoing to surface dominant narratives, counter‑narratives and mnemonic practices. Findings indicated that multiple explanatory frames circulated but public attribution overwhelmingly implicated state actors; that Giwa’s unresolved death materially and psychologically contracted fearless investigative inquiry, displacing resistance into cultural memory; and that the politics of silence institutionalised impunity, eroded juridical and normative safeguards for the press, and stalled mechanisms of democratic accountability. The study concluded that unresolved political violence should be treated as a structural media‑policy problem requiring transnational and civil‑society interventions, truth commissions, independent safety funds and regional enforcement pathways, to restore investigative capacity, reconstitute public trust, and deter future assaults on journalistic autonomy.