This Nigerian journalist has covered the Wagner Group in Africa for years. Here’s what he’s learnt

Nigerian journalist Philip Obaji Jr. has been covering the Wagner Group activities in Africa since 2018. Throughout these years, he’s reported on coups, security contracts and human rights abuses, and was recently abducted and tortured while reporting on the activities of this Russian private army. 

Wagner, which has had a strong presence in Africa for years, was founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close confidant of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin died in a plane crash in August 2023 two months after leading a rebellion against Putin and marching on Moscow with his mercenaries from Eastern Ukraine. 

Obaji's coverage of the Wagner Group has helped him win several journalism awards, including the 2023 One World Media Awards International Journalist of the Year and the 2022 Jaime Brunet International Prize by Spain’s Public University of Navarra. In this interview, he speaks about his work and explains the challenges he faced while reporting on this dangerous group. 

Q. How did you start covering the Wagner Group?

A. Since 2015, I have been a freelance correspondent at the Daily Beast, covering issues around counter-insurgency and conflicts in Western Central Africa. 

Then something happened in 2018. Three Russian journalists travelled to the Central Africa Republic to investigate the activities of the Russian Wagner Group, which at the time had just begun to operate in the country. Somewhere in the central part of the country they were murdered. No one has been held responsible for their deaths. 

My editor at the time, Christopher Dickey, asked me to see what I could get. So I worked closely with the Daily Beast Russian correspondent Anna Nemtsova and we were able to file a story as to exactly how the journalists were killed and the hours leading to their deaths. This triggered my interest in investigating a lot more as to exactly why the Wagner Group got to the country. I felt like I owed the responsibility to these three journalists who were killed. That’s how my interest in reporting and investigating the Russian Wagner Group started. 

Q. What are your areas of interest in covering Wagner?

A. Initially I was mostly interested in human rights violations perpetrated by Wagner. But it's very difficult to talk about human rights without looking at other areas which sometimes are interwoven. For example, the Group has carried out lots of information campaigns. And not just in the Central African Republic but also in Mali. So I began by investigating human rights abuses, but now I'm seeing a relationship between this and issues around disinformation and political instability.

Q. What has been your experience covering Wagner?

A. It's been hugely difficult. People don't really understand the difficulty in even travelling to Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. I’ve been told by some of my contacts in the Wagner Group that I may be at risk because I do have contacts among the local recruits. The Group has mercenaries it hired from Russia, Syria and Belarus among other countries. But they also recruit locally among former rebels who have decided that they don't want to fight against the government. 

I met a couple of those local recruits in Cameroon and they told me that they got orders to get me arrested or even killed. That makes it very difficult to travel into the Central African Republic except I do so unannounced or through other means. 

The second issue is the amount of online abuse that I’ve received. If you go to some social media accounts like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook you'll see some people saying all sorts of negative things about me. Some accounts accuse me of being an agent for the West and some say that I hate the country. Once I received an email from a human trafficker linked to the Wagner Group and he told me specifically that he would silence me if I continued. 

Another challenge is that people are very scared to speak. Your sources in the country are so scared to speak even anonymously because they fear they could be targeted by the Russians. Even the Allied Central Republic Armed Forces are often very difficult. You have to persuade them and give them assurances. If you were doing an investigation in a peaceful country, it would be much easier. But in a country like Central Africa or Mali, you need to do five times more than you would do elsewhere because finding someone willing to speak is very difficult. 

Q. Could you tell me about some of the Wagner pieces that were most challenging to report?

A. I wrote a story about three girls who were advertised on Facebook by someone who was willing to sell them to anyone that was interested in having them as maids. I discovered that these three girls lived in a refugee camp in Cross River State in southern Nigeria. They were actually Cameroonian refugees who fled the conflicts between English speakers and government forces in western Cameroon. 

While in the refugee camp, they met this guy who deceived them and told them he wanted to offer them jobs somewhere. Somehow he took photographs of them and then shared them on Facebook. One of them was sold to another trafficker who eventually handed her to a Wagner mercenary who raped her, got her pregnant and then abandoned her. 

I tracked the journey of this girl from Nigeria to the border community in the Central African Republic. So, I had to travel through very dangerous areas in western Cameroon and other regions. At some point armed men pointed guns at me and kept me hostage for hours before releasing me. And then, even in the community I was in, the border community between Cameroon and the Central African Republic, people thought I was somehow a spy. This was the most dangerous story I’ve ever done. 

Q. You recently won an International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) fellowship to do more reporting on the Wagner Group. How is the story coming? 

A. The ICFJ offered me the inaugural Jim Hoge Reporting Fellowships. This is an opportunity for journalists who seek to pursue the most important stories globally –  from conflict to climate change. I was one of three recipients and my focus is on reporting on the activities of the Wagner Group, especially since the death of its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. 

Right now Wagner is not too involved, but the Russian operations are still going on in Africa. So I'm looking at what's happened to the Wagner Group or what is happening to Russian operations in Africa since the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin. 

Q. What tips would you give to journalists who want to also report on the Wagner Group? 

A. First of all, they have to be ready not just physically but mentally because they're going to face obstacles at some point. Investigating in the Wagner Group is not easy. Some people have died in the process, while some tried and got arrested. So, they've got to prepare themselves mentally. I don't believe that journalists must pursue the most dangerous stories. If you pursue those stories, you could die in the process; and if you die, you can’t tell the story that you're going after. 

Build contacts because that’s very important. Try to build contacts everywhere in the UN missions in Central Africa but also amongst government officials and military officials because one thing that's helped me reporting on the Central Africa Republic is the contacts that have been able to build over time. 

Most times I don't have to go into the countries where Wagner operates to be able to pull out the story. I could just make phone calls and get some information from afar. It's a very restrictive area and a dangerous one to go into. If you want to report on Wagner, build contacts, have a strong sense of mind and just do what you can to get your story.

I have always built my career on the fearless pursuit and expressions of truth. I know this reporting is dangerous. But I feel that I have a sense of responsibility not just to the news organisation I work for but also to the many people who have come under Wagner's aggression and abuse. So I'll continue to do my best.