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The Nigerian journalist has lost his monopoly of information gathering, dissemination and control with the involvement of citizens in ‘journalism’ through social media especially Whatsapp. The objective of this paper is to show how through social media, with emphasis on Whatsapp, Nigerian citizens have been able to find their voices and can now contribute to societal well-being and development by embarking on information gathering and reporting. It uses participant-observation method to interrogate how citizen journalism has engendered development via negative journalism practice. The findings indicate that the government and other relevant stakeholders in the society respond to the voices of the people on issues which ordinarily would have been muted by conventional journalism practice or ignored by government. It concludes that citizen journalism through unconscious and unprofessional practice engenders development by somehow making government accountable through its response to issues of concern in areas that would otherwise, have been muted. Keywords: social media, citizen journalism, development, communication vices, Whatspp, Nigeria

Nigeria is a country reputed for its rich and diverse cultures from the multi-ethnic nationalities that make it up. Indeed, the diversity of traditions and cultures are evidenced in the nation's more than four hundred and seventy (470) tribes. It is in the bid to ensure that each cultural entity is preserved, projected and promoted, that Nigeria has a cultural policy. The cultural policy is decidedly synonymous with the arts and artists since the arts and artists mainly generate the bulk of what materially, at least, constitutes culture. Of course, culture is derived from material and immaterial products all which are products of the creative ingenuities of artists. It is in line with this reasoning that this paper is written, to determine to what extent the Nigerian Cultural Policy has attended to the needs of the arts and artists, with particular emphasis on the performing arts. The performing arts in every culture make up the major part of such Culture's creative and entertainment industry hence this paper is embarked upon to determine to what extent the policy has accommodated the needs of the performing arts. This is done through a detailed analytical assessment of the cultural policy. Recommendations are then made based on the conclusions drawn from the analysis.

Employing the media representation theory, this article uses the historical-analytic, key informant interview (KII) and observation methods to interrogate the issue of politics of succession in Nigeria as portrayed in Saworoide (1999, dir. Tunde Kelani) and Ikoka (2004, dir. Peddie Okao). Apart from highlighting the kind of challenges which politics evokes in the country and the possible ways of remediating them in a contemporary context, the study argues that Nollywood filmmakers have good reasons for shying away from politics, as interesting as it may be; it creates discomfort for governments as well as for the filmmakers. The former on account of their allergy to the truth and the latter on the likelihood of their works being confiscated, banned or even risk to life. The conclusion reached is that filmmakers who engage politics in their creative works deserve encouragement because growing societies such as Nigeria, are in dire need of spokesmen and women, who as change agents, can engender positive and developmental agendas in their ecosystems.

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