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The Sundiata Post Model (1): Where the newsroom meets the knowledge institution
By Max Amuchie | The Sunday Stew
Following the completion of The Three-Month Sprint series, our editorial roadmap dictated a sharp turn into a four-part methodology series exploring the inner workings of the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI). That exploration will still come. However, the remarkable public interest generated by our detailed account of the 91-day journey that yielded a macro-theoretical trilogy prompted an unexpected, yet necessary, detour.
Readers were intrigued not only by the three analytical constructs themselves, but by the process that made them possible. How did an independent newsroom develop three original analytical constructs in just 91 days? What institutional philosophy made such an experiment possible? And what might this reveal about the future of journalism in the digital age?
Those questions made a further conversation not merely worthwhile, but imperative.
There was another development that reinforced the need for this detour. As the discussions surrounding The Three-Month Sprint unfolded, it became evident that artificial intelligence systems and search algorithms had begun identifying the Sundiata Post Model as a distinct concept and generating summaries and inferences from previously published material. That development carried an important implication. Once a concept enters algorithmic knowledge systems, it begins to acquire a digital identity that may increasingly shape how students, researchers, journalists, and policy practitioners first encounter it. Defining the concept authoritatively therefore became essential, rather than allowing its meaning to be shaped by algorithmic interpretations drawn from scattered publications.
That imperative also required a change in sequence. Before examining the methodology of the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI), it was first necessary to explain the institutional framework that gave rise to The Insecurity Triad, the Trinity of State Decay (TSD), and the DSI itself.
Reimagining an Ancient Divide
For generations, the newsroom and the knowledge institution have occupied adjacent but largely separate worlds. One reported events as they unfolded; the other developed theories to explain them. Yet the story told in The Three-Month Sprint suggests that this traditional separation may no longer be as fixed as we have assumed.
As I reflected on the conversations that followed the series, it became increasingly clear that the real story was not simply the creation of three original analytical constructs. It was the emergence of an institutional framework for knowledge production that had quietly taken shape within Sundiata Post. What had appeared to be a sequence of individual achievements was, in fact, evidence of a broader institutional philosophy.
What gradually became clear was that what we have come to call the Sundiata Post Model emerged from a simple yet consequential question: What happens when those two worlds meet?
Defining the Sundiata Post Model
This essay, therefore, formally introduces and defines the Sundiata Post Model as an institutional framework for media-based knowledge production in which an independent newsroom systematically integrates journalism, original research, conceptual innovation, and scholarly dissemination to produce original analytical constructs that contribute to public understanding, academic inquiry, and policy discourse within the global knowledge ecosystem.
After three decades in journalism, I have increasingly found myself asking not only how journalism can better report the world, but how it can contribute more substantially to humanity’s stock of knowledge. Early in a journalist’s career, the questions are naturally immediate: What is the story? How do I report it well? Those questions never lose their importance. Over time, however, another question inevitably begins to emerge: What can journalism itself become? That question has gradually become one of the defining reflections of my professional life. The Sundiata Post Model is my attempt to answer it—not as an abstract theory, but as an institutional framework shaped by experience, reflection, and experimentation.
A definition, however, acquires meaning only when expressed through practice. The Sundiata Post Model did not emerge as an abstract theory conceived in isolation. It evolved through the lived experience of The Sunday Stew—my weekly syndicated column that gradually expanded beyond commentary into a platform for systematic inquiry, conceptual innovation, and scholarly engagement. In many respects, the story of the Model is inseparable from the evolution of the column itself.
Viewed from this perspective, the implications extend beyond Sundiata Post itself. They invite a reconsideration of the role of the newspaper column in the digital age. For much of its history, column writing has been associated primarily with commentary, persuasion, and public reflection. The experience of The Sunday Stew suggests that a column can also become a site of systematic inquiry, conceptual innovation, and knowledge production. Rather than merely interpreting events, it can generate analytical constructs that enter scholarly and policy conversations.
The discussion that follows explores how that reflection gradually evolved into an institutional framework that reimagines the relationship between the newsroom and the knowledge institution.
Connecting to the Global Knowledge Ecosystem
The significance of the Sundiata Post Model extends beyond the production of original analytical constructs. It also lies in its capacity to create pathways through which ideas originating in an independent newsroom can enter global scholarly conversations. The publication of working papers, the establishment of the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), engagement with scholarly repositories, and participation in international research networks demonstrate that journalism and academic knowledge production need not exist in separate institutional silos.
The evolution of The Sunday Stew into a platform for knowledge production also produced another, less anticipated consequence. It began to create pathways through which ideas developed within an independent newsroom could travel beyond journalism into the global knowledge ecosystem.
My appointment as an Expert Member and Peer Reviewer by ScienceOpen—the Berlin, Germany-based global research discovery and scholarly publishing platform that connects researchers, publishers, universities, and research institutions across disciplines—illustrates this broader trajectory. While the appointment was based on my scholarly profile and publication record, it also reflects the growing permeability between journalism and the academy that the Sundiata Post Model seeks to advance. It suggests that original ideas developed within an independent newsroom can participate in global research ecosystems when supported by rigorous methodology, systematic documentation, and scholarly dissemination.
The significance, therefore, lies not in one appointment but in what it represents: the possibility that an independent newsroom can participate credibly in global knowledge production.
This is perhaps one of the most important implications of the Sundiata Post Model: it demonstrates that an independent newsroom in Africa or elsewhere can contribute not only to daily public discourse but also to the production, circulation, and evaluation of knowledge within the global academic community.
An Emerging Body of Knowledge
What makes this evolution particularly noteworthy is not simply the number of constructs that have emerged, but the coherence that binds them together. Within a relatively short period, Sundiata Post has developed:
•The Insecurity Triad — a foundational analytical framework reconceptualising insecurity as an interconnected ecosystem;
•The Trinity of State Decay (TSD) — a macro-diagnostic theory explaining the structural dynamics of state decay and the progressive decoupling of sovereign authority;
•The Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI) — a quantitative metric for measuring the degree of decoupling between formal sovereignty and effective state authority; and
•The Sundiata Post Model — an institutional framework explaining how an independent newsroom can systematically generate original analytical constructs.
Collectively, they constitute an interdisciplinary body of work situated at the intersection of six disciplines: political science, international relations, sociology, security studies, quantitative social science, and journalism and media studies. Together, they demonstrate the capacity of media-based knowledge production to generate original analytical constructs across disciplinary boundaries.
There is an important progression here. The first three are substantive analytical constructs. The fourth explains the institutional framework that made their development possible. In doing so, the conversation shifts from “Here are four original ideas” to “Here is an institutional framework capable of systematically producing original ideas.”
That distinction helps explain why the Three-Month Sprint generated such widespread interest. The real story was never simply that three analytical constructs were developed within 91 days. The deeper question was how an independent newsroom could develop an institutional framework capable of producing original analytical constructs.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this story is not that four original constructs emerged from one independent newsroom. It is that their emergence suggests that, under the right institutional conditions, the modern newsroom can evolve into a knowledge-producing institution.
Looking Ahead
The Sundiata Post Model is ultimately an argument that a newsroom can become more than a publisher of news. It can become a producer of enduring knowledge whose ideas travel from journalism into scholarship, policy, and increasingly, the algorithmic knowledge systems that shape how the world discovers and understands new concepts. Whether adopted, adapted, or challenged, the Model is offered as a contribution to a broader conversation about what journalism can become in the twenty-first century. If the twentieth century established the newsroom as society’s information institution, the twenty-first century may yet establish it as a knowledge institution. That is the possibility the Sundiata Post Model seeks to explore.
Finally, it is important to emphasise that, like any institutional framework, the Sundiata Post Model is a proposition to be examined, tested, refined, and, where necessary, challenged through practice and scholarly engagement.
This introductory essay has sought to define the Sundiata Post Model and explain why it emerged. The next two parts of this series will examine its institutional architecture and the conditions for long-term sustainability that will enable such a model to endure. If journalism is to become a genuine knowledge institution, it must be intellectually rigorous, institutionally coherent, and economically sustainable.
Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned.
•Dr. Max Amuchie is a Scholar-Journalist, Media CEO & Theorist-In-Chief, Lead Researcher at the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU), and an Expert Member and Peer Reviewer at ScienceOpen. He is the architect of The Insecurity Triad framework for African security analysis as well as the Trinity of State Decay theory, and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI)—original frameworks for understanding, categorising, and measuring conflict, state decay, and sovereignty in the Global South. He writes ‘The Sunday Stew’, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria, Africa, and the Global South in a changing world.
X (formerly Twitter): @MaxAmuchie | Email: max.a@sundiatapost.com | Tel: +234(0)8053069436
President Bola Tinubu has directed the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to investigate major technology companies and Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms operating in Nigeria over allegations of anti-competitive practices, unlawful exploitation of news content and other potentially unfair market conduct.
The investigation follows a joint petition submitted to the Presidency by the Nigerian Press Organisation (NPO), comprising the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria (NPAN), the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON), and the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP).
Announcing the development in a statement on Monday, the FCCPC said the directive was conveyed by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris.
“The Federal Government’s position was communicated to the FCCPC in a letter signed by the Honourable Minister of Information and National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris. The investigation promises to open a new vista in Nigeria’s media history.
“In recent years, concerns have been raised by the Nigerian media industry over the growing impact of certain digital platforms on the sustainability of the country’s news ecosystem. Specifically, the NPO is increasingly uncomfortable with major technology companies including Meta, Alphabet, X (formerly Twitter), and certain generative AI platforms, citing practices capable of undermining fair competition, the commercial viability of Nigerian media organisations, and the legitimate rights of content creators and publishers,” the Commission stated.
Reacting to the directive, the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the FCCPC, Mr. Tunji Bello, said the Commission would conduct an independent, transparent and evidence-based investigation.
“We recognise the strategic importance of the media to Nigeria’s democracy and the equally significant role of technology in driving innovation and economic growth. Our responsibility is to objectively determine the facts and ensure that competition within the digital ecosystem remains fair, transparent, and consistent with Nigerian law,” Bello said.
He stressed that the investigation should not be interpreted as a presumption of wrongdoing against any organisation, but as an opportunity to establish the facts through due process.
“Every party will be accorded a fair opportunity to present relevant information before any conclusions are reached. In specific terms, FCCPC will determine whether the practices in question constitute a breach of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act (FCCPA) 2018 or any other applicable law.
“In the past, FCCPC had investigated META and in 2025, won a landmark case against the tech giant for violations of FCCPA, including data breach, for which the tech giant was fined $220m. Meta has, however, appealed the fine,” the statement signed by Director of Corporate Affairs, Ondaje Ijagwu, added.
According to the FCCPC, the investigation will examine allegations of market dominance and potential anti-competitive conduct by the companies involved.
It will also probe claims of unauthorised extraction, scraping, ingestion or commercial use of copyrighted news articles, broadcast materials and other original journalistic content for developing and training Generative AI models.
Another key area of inquiry is the allegation that Nigerian news publishers have been denied meaningful opportunities to negotiate fair compensation or appropriate commercial arrangements for the use of their journalistic content.
The Commission noted that similar concerns had previously been raised in South Africa, where, following an investigation by the South African Competition Commission, it said Google agreed to compensate South African news media with R688 million ($40 million) annually for three to five years.
Nigerians, intent on getting to the root of the current fake agency scandal raving around the Presidency must start by ascertaining the whereabouts of the N27.5billion, said to have triggered off the entire saga.
Babachir Lawal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), who weighed in on the scandal surrounding the purported Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC), stressed on Monday night that Nigerians must not forget that the sharing formular regarding the amount, which is said to be the takeoff grant for the body, was the foundation of the dispute.
Recall that Adeniyi Adeyemi, Director General of the agency, after accusing Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff (CoS) to President Bola Tinubu, of collecting N400 million from him while awaiting a balance of N200million for facilitating his appointment, upped the ante by alleging that disagreement over the sharing formula of the grant triggered off the dispute.
Adeyemi had accused the CoS of demanding 48 per cent of the entire grant for himself, which he refused to part with, leading to the disagreement to the extent that the former Speaker of the House of Representatives now declaring war, which the Presidency relied on to declare the agency non-existence.
Babachir, a guest of Prime Time, a public affairs programme on ARISE NEWS Television, wondered why Nigerians were limiting themselves to the N1.3billion budgeted for the agency by the National Assembly in the 2026 appropriation without talking about the huger amount of N27.5billion.
Hear him: “Nigerians are talking about how 1.3 billion Naira was inserted into the budget. The man himself first said the quarrel came about because he refused to part with 48% of the 27-point-something billion Naira take-off grant. That money has been spent before this budget office was looking for the budget. Who gave him the money? It was not appropriated for; it’s not in any budget, that 27.5 billion Naira for which he says somebody demanded 48%. Who gave him the money? How did the process of generating the request for the release come up? How did it go through?
“We are just talking about the tip of the iceberg here. Down there, before we got to here, 27.5 billion Naira had already been disbursed, according to him, as a take-off grant. How did that money get to him? It was not in the budget. So, this is what should frighten us. If such money can go to a fictitious organisation, we only now begin to see it when we are quarreling about how did it get into the budget. How did that money get to them?
“I think we all know that thieves and armed robbers always fight and they expose themselves during sharing. His complaint was that the Presidency was after him because somebody demanded 48 per cent of the take-off grant of 27.5 billion Naira. And so, somebody was not happy since he refused to part with that money.
“So, you see, that’s how we got to know this to start with. That is the reason why we got to know this on his side of the coin. It’s about the sharing of the 27.5 billion Naira. That’s why the thing came up. So, it didn’t work. It should have worked before that money left the government coffers into the account of the agency.
“It depends on the will of the President. I can use myself as an example. When there was this brouhaha between me and the Senate, remember I was suspended for some time while an investigation was going on. So now, that is best practice.
“It’s already out of their hands. I believe now the thing is on the President’s desk. It is a legislative oversight. This government – this National Assembly – has no interest in scrutinising the budget that comes before them. Most of the legislators just go in there to earn their salaries and collect allowances and go. They don’t scrutinise the budget line by line. We all know how this particular government works. There are some people that when they talk, nobody else has the authority to contravene
“It’s not a one-off thing. The issue of buying appointments is not new. People have been hearing it as rumors, as allegations, all over that. In this government, people buy appointments. We’ve heard it on the streets. And so this is not a new thing. I don’t know in our time. Nobody was buying appointments. No, it’s not to my knowledge. It’s not to my knowledge that people buy appointments. It probably could be, but I wouldn’t know that. It’s not part of our mandate to know such things.
“This government doesn’t take governance seriously. When things like this happen, Nigerians are not surprised. We are only interested in this because we have an opportunity to poke attacks on the government, not because we don’t know that these things happen in this government. It’s so porous.
“There are so many power centers that, you know, nobody does a budget. Nobody implements a budget. Ministers go to the office and sit down and read newspapers. Overheads, maybe if they are lucky, it comes one per quarter, at least paid quarterly. Some governments don’t even get overheads. Everybody’s redundant. But there’s money being appropriated and money being spent, but nobody sees where the money is going to. So that is part of the loopholes.
“Why are you interested in 27.5 billion Naira that had already been collected and spent? We are talking about an agency that we are claiming doesn’t exist. Maybe it exists, but it doesn’t have a legal framework for its existence. But it exists. And there are a lot of powerful people that make sure it exists in that form. Those are the people we need to expose. The Chief of Staff, in particular, is so powerful. The SGF is there, just reneging on his responsibilities. And nothing has happened now.”
Explaining official procedures for documenting new agencies, the former SGF, said: “If an agency is received, processed, and forwarded without somebody asking in the SGF’s office exactly who these people are, it means there’s a dereliction of duty on the side of the SGF.
“The act setting up that agency will sometimes say the position has to be advertised, interviewed, and shortlisted names sent to the president for approval. Some, you just write and he just approves. So, the SGF will go through the file, and in that process of due diligence, will be able to find out whether such an organisation exists. If there is no record for it in the SGF’s office, he will raise a red flag on it.
“What we used to do is if there’s a new agency that either the President or a minister proposes to handle some specific assignments or duties, he will first of all raise a memo to the president, who will approve that such be created. And then a memo will be sent to the Federal Executive Council on that particular agency, and we’ll debate it.
“Now, sometimes it will require some legislation to give that agency a legal mandate to operate. Some will just be within the presidential approval, and then the agency is created. Because really, you cannot appropriate funds to an agency that has not been legislated for.
“There has to be a legal basis for its existence. But first of all, it is the executive that raises such an agency, makes the proposal, debates it, and the Attorney General of the Federation will normally put an opinion on it. Then, if the Federal Executive Council approves, it’s sent to the legislature for legal establishment.
“It should not have arisen in the first place if it is not a legally approved agency. It should not exist. And the SGF would know that if it doesn’t exist on any basis, why is he forwarding a request? If it doesn’t exist, such will not happen in our time.
“I’m sure the President would assume that such an entity has gone through all the checks and balances before it is established, and therefore, not every communication from that agency needs to be verified. But as far as it is coming through the office of the SGF, due diligence must be done first before it is forwarded.
“This SGF has been sidelined in a lot of things from what we hear. He has been sidelined in a lot of things. It’s institutional compromise, because in this, I sense there’s quite a big racket going on somewhere along the line. If the agency was created by maybe one big man alone, and then he wants to go through the budget process, the budget office assigns the budget code according to the chart of accounts in GIFMIS. So, how did they manage to assign the budget code for this agency that does not exist? Who inserted it?
“Because first of all, the budget office issues a budget call circular to MDAs, and everybody starts to prepare his budget according to the budget line. They give you ceilings, and you prepare your budget and forward it to the budget office as an agency or ministry. Now, the Ministry of Budget and Planning would, in our time, call every MDA to come and defend its budget. Now, if you don’t exist, how did they recognise that you are a genuine entity? Who gave out the budget code and allowed their budget to pass?
“That’s what oversight is. The SGF should be able to know, because before it gets to the National Assembly, that budget goes through the SGF. “Unless there’s a dereliction of duty by the SGF’s office, the responsibility to flag that this is a fake agency would have come from them.”
Sepp Blatter is unhappy with a situation where Donald Trump, would pick up his phone and call on the Federation of Internation Football Associations (FIFA) to change its established rules as has now emerged in the case of Folarin Balogun, a strike in the United States squad currently at the World Cup.
Balogun, a Nigerian-US citizen, is supposed to miss a match between his country and Belgium in the Round of 16, on Monday, following a red card he picked in the last encounter of the team between Bosnia and Herzegovina.
However, it has now been revealed that the intervention of the President of the United States, who reportedly called Gianni Infantino, current FIFA President to review Balogun’s automatic one-game suspension, saw to the world’s footballing regulator acquiescing by shifting the implementation of the ban by a year.
Railing on the development, which would now make the 25-year-old eligible to file out against Belgium in the last 16 of the World Cup later on Monday, Blatter, disgraced out of the FIFA Presidency in 2015, wrote on X: “Red cards are not overturned by political phone calls,” scandal-hit Blatter said on X.
“They are overturned by rules, evidence and independent bodies. If a US President intervenes with the FIFA President — and a player is suddenly cleared before a World Cup knockout match — the question is unavoidable: Quo vadis (Where are you going), FIFA?”
The 90-year-old former FIFA boss, a usual critic of Infantino, who once told Bild, German newspaper in February that the new FIFA had become a “dictator,” added: “Football must never become a playground for political power.”
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