remember my exact offence, but my dad promised me if I told the truth, he would give me two strokes of the cane instead of four.

Well, I shouldn’t. It happened in the late 80s — long, long ago.

The times have changed now, but many who grew up in Africa around that period were raised by parents who followed the Biblical injunction in Proverbs 13:24: “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. This “rod” generally means discipline, guidance and correction, but it can occasionally extend to physical punishment. I digress.

But back to the story. If any of his children did something wrong, my dad often offered an incentive or a lesser punishment in exchange for the truth. If you took meat from the pot without permission and my dad knew, he asked: “Tell me the truth: did you do it?” If he planned to give you four strokes of the “rod” for taking what did not belong to you, he halved it if you confessed. Whether you were right or wrong, my dad always wanted you to say the truth. This meant I was a child when truthtelling became ingrained in me; I always told the truth not because I was saintly, but because I considered it more rewarding than lying, thanks to my dad.

Fast-forward to February 2024, more than 35 years after. My dad, the same dad, sent me a jarring text: “A thousand investigative journalists cannot stop corruption in Nigeria. You better tread softly and not allow them eliminate you.”

I had exposed a ‘businessman’ by the name IBD Dende as in fact a smuggler and gunrunner, with criminal collaborators in the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and some of the most powerful Nigerian public officials as enablers. In response, someone – connected to him, of course – authored a piece titled ‘Fisayo Soyombo: When A Journalist Becomes An Assassin’.

It terrified by dad.

By the way, after that dubious, vicious article came a series of covert and overt death threats. These were then followed by three bribe offers. The first — “any amount you want” — was made by the go-between of a certain individual; I won’t name who but feel free to guess. The second — again “any amount you want” — was made by an individual but on behalf of an agency; I won’t name the agency, neither will I prevent you from hazarding a guess. And the third, an offer of N50 million. These offers would have settled me financially for life, but I declined them in a flash. Accepting any would have required me to tell lies or suppress the truth at least — that’s not how my father raised me.

Last year, I was under constant threat by smugglers. One DM-ed me on Twitter: “Mr Man, step back from this IBD DENDE; those paying you don’t want you to live long.”

Another didn’t attempt to conceal his hate in the privacy of a message box. Instead, he blatantly commented on my Facebook wall: “Very soon, we will not hear from you again.”

I have been detained by the Nigeria police multiple times, including last year — for no other offence than truthtelling: one time, my organisation FIJ had exposed the embezzlement of over N1billion meant for the construction of police transit camps in six states and the capital Abuja; the most recent, we exposed multi billion-naira corruption in the office of the senior special adviser to the president on SDGs. In November, I was detained for three days by the Nigeria Army. I was picked up on the field during another truthtelling mission, but rather than admit I was arrested during an undercover investigation on illegal crude oil bunkering, the Army sensationally claimed I was found with criminals. Just two months after that, I got wind of an inter-agency plan to arrest me; this time it wasn’t just the Army or the Police; It was the Army, the Police, the Customs and the Department of State Services (DSS), more colloquially known as the State Security Service (SSS).

Someone once opened a Facebook account with the profile name: ‘Dedicated to the End of Fisayo Soyomi [sic]. Sometime in 2021, a text was delivered to my organisation’s official line; it read: “I will find you, sever your head, then you will know how to mind your business.” In 2022, after releasing ‘Prophets of their Pockets’, an undercover investigation exposing fake prophesying by religious institutions, an anonymous sender emailed me to say I would “die suddenly” if I didn’t expunge the multimedia articles from the Internet. Well, I defiantly wrote him back: “You will die before me!” Thankfully, three years later, I am still alive, and will be for as long as God deems. Still on that story, the head prophet of a church released a broadcast during which he said I would “not go scot-free”.

These threats and many more have come to define my living; life as a hardcore investigative journalist in Nigeria consists of chasing my stories in one breath, and fending off danger and looking over my shoulder in another. Naturally, this can be dreadful for my loved ones, not least my father. Worrying about my safekeeping has become his unintended pastime. If you asked him, he wouldn’t mind me switching to a less perilous profession. The only problem is that my style of investigative journalism is technically the ‘monster’ my father created.

Not once, of course, did he ever suggest journalism, much less investigative journalism, to me as a potential career path, but he made truthtelling the cornerstone of my childhood. What I have done is interpret that within the context of public interest and societal advancement. My dad’s worries about my truthtelling and its implications for my safety have come too late, nearly four decades too late. And this is why I say to you all today: be careful what you teach your children.

https://web.facebook.com/fisayo.soyombo