Why this matters

1. For media organisations looking to hire journalism talent, UCJ is a credible talent pool.

2. UCJ’s evolution highlights the power of peer learning, mentorship, and curiosity-driven practice in shaping adaptable, values-led journalists.

3. As media industries across Africa confront questions of credibility and capacity, UCJ offers a model for how passion-driven ecosystems can sustain the future of journalism from the ground up.

1. From Accra with love

For three days every October, Accra becomes the capital of West African journalism. Reporters and editors from across the subcontinent gather for the West Africa Media Excellence Conference and Awards (WAMECA), a yearly convergence that has grown into the region’s most credible celebration of press freedom and journalistic excellence.

The three-day event unfolds through plenary sessions, workshops, and panel discussions that explore the region’s most significant media challenges, from digital transformation and press freedom to the ethics of AI and investigative reporting.

But by the final day, when the lights dim for the awards ceremony, the gathering begins to feel distinctly Nigerian. The red-carpet interviews are dotted with familiar accents, the nominees’ list reads like a map of Nigeria’s journalism ecosystem, and as the winners are announced, you already know which country sweeps home the awards.

This year was no different. Nigerians submitted 47% of the entries and took home several of the top prizes, including the coveted West Africa Reporter of the Year Award. Kunle Adebajo, HumAngle’s former investigations editor, won this award for his story investigating the funding of a secessionist group in Eastern Nigeria. It was the second time in a row that a HumAngle writer had won the award. In 2023 (WAMECA skipped 2024), Temitayo Akinyemi, HumAngle’s former interactive editor, won the prize for his story detailing the environmental damage of illegal oil refining in Port Harcourt, a city in Nigeria’s oil-rich Niger Delta.

Apart from being HumAngle employees at the time they wrote the stories that won them the awards, Adebajo and Akinyemi had something else in common: neither had received a traditional media education. Their journalism careers began years earlier, in university, as members of the Union of Campus Journalists (UCJ). This student-led press body has quietly become one of Nigeria’s most effective journalism training grounds.

In the hierarchy of Nigeria’s journalism pipeline, the UCJ sits firmly outside the formal system. It doesn’t confer degrees or run accredited courses. Yet, its alumni have gone on to populate bylines, newsrooms, and editorial desks across local and international media organisations, including Reuters, Al Jazeera, The Guardian UK, CNN, Premium Times, The Republic, Big Cabal Media, and the Associated Press.

👀 We heard from the grapevine that you didn’t know we make videos. If reading isn’t your only love language, check out our Instagram for quick, 60-second clips that break down the big ideas we talk about here.

2. The origins of a journalist factory

If you take UCJ as an umbrella term for all campus journalism associations in Nigeria, then the first was established in 1963 at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), then known as the University of Ife. It was called the Association of Campus Journalists (ACJ), a student-led press body created to hold the university administration accountable and promote intellectual debate on campus. But the first union to actually bear the name Union of Campus Journalists (UCJ) was founded at the University of Ibadan (UI) in 1987. From Ibadan, the model spread across the country to Ilorin, Nsukka, Sokoto and beyond. Becoming a network of student newsrooms that mirrored the values and tensions of Nigeria’s mainstream press.

Over the decades, UCJ chapters have become training grounds for some of the country’s most accomplished journalists and editors. Notable alumni include Dapo Olorunyomi, co-founder and publisher of Premium Times, and Fisayo Soyombo, founder of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ).

Yet what’s even more striking about the UCJ’s legacy is that many of its most successful alumni never studied Mass Communication or Media Studies. Dapo Olorunyomi read Literature at Obafemi Awolowo University — a discipline that you could consider journalism-adjacent — but Fisayo Soyombo studied Animal Science at the University of Ibadan, a course far removed from the world of news and storytelling. This pattern repeats itself across generations: some of Nigeria’s finest journalists began as outsiders to the formal study of journalism.

3. The outsider advantage

The idea of the Outsider Advantage helps explain why UCJ members often outperform traditional journalism students. Although not formally defined in academic literature, the concept draws from the ideas Colin Wilson proposed in his book The Outsider (1956). He argued that people who exist outside established systems often possess a unique creative edge. Stripped of institutional conditioning, outsiders tend to see problems differently, questioning conventions rather than inheriting them.

In the context of journalism, this translates into curiosity unbound by classroom theory and a willingness to experiment with storytelling, tone, and investigative depth.

For UCJ members, this advantage is evident in their approach to learning through hands-on experience. Without the structure of a Mass Communication curriculum, they build their craft through self-education, mentorship, and relentless practice; breaking news stories on student governance and editing sharp opinion pieces on university management long before entering professional spaces. This blend of autonomy and pressure cultivates adaptability and critical thinking, qualities that often define great reporters.

“The UCJ UNILORIN workshops, events and congresses are like the muscle that piled up to pivot the kind of journalism I am doing today,” Pelumi Salako said in an interview with the International Centre for Journalists in 2021. Salako would eventually go on to win the 2024 Future Awards Prize in Journalism. By approaching journalism as a practice rather than a prescribed discipline, UCJ members grow into storytellers who are trained by experience, not just instruction. In this way, their outsider status becomes their greatest strength, a source of originality, resilience, and a more profound sense of purpose that often sets them apart from their formally trained peers.

Because they lacked formal training in journalism, UCJ members often grew up outside the traditions of Nigerian newsrooms, and that distance shaped how they learned the craft. Deprived of the local industry’s conventions, they turned instead to foreign publications for guidance. “Because we were not Mass Communication students, we did not know how journalism was practised in Nigerian newsrooms. We were reading publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post and learning from them,” Temitayo Akinyemi told Communiqué. For Akinyemi, this kind of aspirational mimicry became an education in itself, helping refine his taste and sharpen his editorial instincts. His investigation, All Die Na Die, which won the 2023 WAMECA West Africa Reporter of the Year Award, was modelled after The Washington Post’s Africa’s Rising Cities project, a long-form, multimedia exploration of urban transformation across the continent.

4. Only true believers need apply

Another thing UCJ has going for it is that it attracts people who actually want to study journalism. In Nigeria, Law is the premier course for arts and humanities students. However, limited spaces in universities mean that not everyone who applies is accepted. As a compromise, many are placed in other courses, Mass Communication being a common fallback. The result is that Mass Communication departments across the country are filled with students who never intended to become journalists in the first place.

“A lot of Mass Communication students are just there to earn a living, not necessarily because they’re passionate about journalism. And that’s why you find that when many of them leave school, they tend to focus on the PR and Communication part of it, which is more lucrative, rather than public-interest journalism. But UCJ is different because you apply voluntarily,” Adebajo told Communiqué.

There have been efforts to fix this problem. In 2020, Nigeria’s National Universities Commission (NUC) issued a directive to unbundle the Mass Communication degree, breaking it into seven specialised programmes: Journalism and Media Studies, Public Relations, Advertising, Broadcasting, Film and Multimedia Studies, Development Communication Studies, and Information and Media Studies. The goal was to create clearer professional pathways and align academic curricula with industry realities. But implementation has been slow. Many universities lack the resources or faculty to run all seven programmes at once.

Some institutions have made progress. Covenant University has scaled down its traditional Mass Communication programme to make room for newer specialisations. The University of Lagos remains the only institution to fully comply with the directive. In June this year, the university upgraded its Department of Mass Communication into a Faculty of Communication and Media Studies, housing all seven degree programmes.

Still, for most universities, journalism education remains trapped in an outdated model, one where theory outweighs practice, and pragmatism often replaces passion. It’s in that vacuum that UCJ thrives.

5. A double-edged pen

For all its strengths, the UCJ isn’t without its limitations. It leans heavily on opinion writing rather than core news reporting. This helps young journalists develop their voice but leaves many underprepared for the rigour of professional newsrooms, where structure, objectivity, and sourcing matter more than style.

Also, the focus on commentary often brings UCJ members into conflict with university authorities. Kunle Adebajo experienced this firsthand when he was rusticated for two semesters in his final year at the University of Ibadan after publishing an article critical of the school. Unable to proceed to Law School with his peers, he turned to journalism full-time. Fisayo Soyombo, then an editor at the International Centre for Investigative Reporting, was helpful in this transition, giving him his first professional newsroom job. It was in this role that Adebajo won his first WAMECA award, for Best Story in Telecoms and ICT Reporting, in 2019.

Another limitation is UCJ’s narrow focus on print and text-based storytelling. Members rarely explore other forms of journalism, such as broadcast journalism. As the media landscape shifts toward digital and cross-platform formats, this gap risks leaving the next generation of UCJ journalists less equipped for the demands of modern storytelling. Some chapters of the UCJ have begun to address this problem, starting YouTube channels where members can experiment with video journalism.

UCJ’s enduring influence raises important questions about the future of journalism education in Nigeria. If the most effective training ground exists outside the official university system, what does that say about how schools teach journalism?

UCJ’s model proves that mentorship, experimentation, and peer-driven learning are crucial to developing competent journalists, characteristics that university departments can incorporate in improving their Mass Communication degree programmes. For UCJ, however, the challenge is sustainability; ensuring that campus journalism receives the institutional support, resources, and protection it needs to continue producing talent.

Thank you for reading Communiqué! Help us give Africa’s media and creative industries the coverage it deserves by making a donation here.