26/08/2024 – The Centre for journalism, Innovation and Development (CJID) strongly condemns the recurrent albeit incessant harassment, arrests, abduction and arbitrary detention of journalists and media professionals by security agents, especially men of the Nigerian Police Force and officials of the State Security Service also known as the Department of State Service (DSS). The latest in this series of attacks is the arrest and detention of the West Africa Editor of the Conversation Africa and Pioneer Editor of the BBC Pidgin Service, Mr Adejuwon Soyinka, by officials of the State Security Service (SSS) in Lagos on Sunday the 25th of August, 2024.
For reasons yet undisclosed, Mr Soyinka was arrested and taken into custody at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos shortly after he arrived in Nigeria from the United Kingdom. He was detained for over six hours and only released upon the intervention of the International Press Institute (IPI). The SSS is, however, still in possession of his international passport.
The CJID, through its Press Attack Tracker, has noted with great concern the perpetual harassment of journalists by security forces under the current President Bola Tinubu-led administration.
The Press Attack Tracker has tracked, verified, and documented 121 incidents of attacks on journalists between May 29, 2023, and August 26, 2024. 81 of the attacks were perpetrated by state actors, mainly men of the Nigerian Armed Forces, the Nigerian Police Force, and the State Security Service(SSS).
During the last nationwide #EndbadGovernance protest, the PAT documented 67 attacks on journalists who covered the protest in various locations across the country.
On August 14th, the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), Mr Fisayo Soyombo, was detained for more than seven hours at the National Cybercrime Centre(NCC) of the Nigerian Police Force headquarters in Abuja upon his voluntary appearance at the police NCC following the police’s insistence that Mr Soyombo must be produced for interrogation by the FIJ’s board chairperson in March.
Mr Soyombo and another FIJ reporter, Mr Daniel Ojukwu, who was also arbitrarily arrested and detained for ten days in May 2024, now have to report to the Police Headquarters every two weeks even though the FIJ office is located in Lagos. This development puts the organisation and the involved journalists under undue physical, mental, and financial constraints.
On the 15th of August, a freelance journalist, Mr Abdulrasheed Hammad, got a call from one of Muhammed Ahmed inviting him to the DSS office in Sokoto state. Hammad was summoned and threatened via the phone call over a report he did to spotlight how some sachet water factories in Sokoto state continued to produce and sell pure water to the public without registering with the National Agency For Food And Drug Administration And Control (NAFDAC).
Similarly, According to a statement by Media Rights Agenda (MRA), in three separate letters dated August 22 as reported, Ms Ayomide Eweje, Managing Editor of Alimosho Today, a Lagos-based community news outlet, a former reporter with the news organisation, Mr Wisdom Okezie and the Publisher, Mr. Oluwamodupe Akinola, were asked to report to the office of the Assistant Inspector-General (AIG) of Police, Zone 2 Command in Onikan, Lagos, tomorrow, August 27, 2024 to “facilitate” an undisclosed investigation.
This rather worrisome trend of undisguised and deliberate targeting of journalists for various forms of attacks has been allowed to fester by the deafening silence of the leaderships of the various security agencies despite repeated calls from various quarters, including the media and civil society stakeholders.
We find it even more troubling the deliberate attempt to criminalise journalism by the security agencies.
We reiterate that sections 39 and 22 of the Nigerian Constitution guarantee the right to freedom of expression and mandate journalists and the media to perform accountability functions, respectively. The Nigerian government and all security agencies have a duty to protect and ensure the safety of journalists when they perform this accountability role.
The Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, and the Director General of the State Security Service (SSS), Yusuf Magaji Bichi, must immediately end the willful use of the Police Force and the SSS to suppress journalists across the country.
Journalism is the bedrock of a functional democracy without which no development can be achieved. As such, journalists must be allowed a free and safe environment to perform their duties effectively without fear or intimidation.
Signed,
Busola Ajibola
Deputy Director, Journalism Program, CJID