Abductions, detentions: Echoes of Abacha-era media clampdown resound under Tinubu

The wave of abduction of journalists that continues to grow under a so-called democratic government has no doubt become a point of concern for media practitioners who now have to worry about their safety as they discharge their duties.

The concerns are not only for reporters, editors and every media practitioner but also for their families and friends who fear for the safety and freedom of their loved ones.

Given the abduction of First News Editor, Segun Olatunji, from his residence in Lagos on March 15, 2024, by the military, to the recent ordeal of Daniel Ojukwu of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, who was seized by the police on the streets of Lagos, media professionals find themselves in a dire situation reminiscent of Nigeria’s junta era.

This is even as the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, said no journalist had been incarcerated under the President Bola Tinubu administration.

According to a statement on Friday, the Minister during a press briefing in Abuja, said, “I have not seen somebody in the life of this administration, for example, who has been put in jail, or who has gone into exile as a result of press freedom.”

Ojukwu went missing on Wednesday, May 1, 2024. His numbers were switched off, and his whereabouts were unknown to colleagues, family, and friends.

FIJ reporter detained

On Thursday, the FIJ made a missing person report at police stations in the area where Ojukwu was headed, However, on Friday, a private detective hired by FIJ tracked the last active location of the journalist’s phones to an address in Isheri Olofin, a location FIJ believed was where the police picked him up.

Ojukwu’s family later got wind of his detention at the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, where they were made to understand the authorities were accusing him of violating the 2015 Cybercrime Act.

His abduction came at a time when Nigerian journalists, last Thursday, joined their counterparts across the globe to mark the World Press Freedom Day.

FIJ noted that on the same day last year, World Press Freedom Day 2023, men of the Area F Police in Lagos arrested Ojukwu for telling them to stop punching a driver.

Ojukwu was given access to his phone on Sunday following sustained media pressure. He told his employers he had been moved to Abuja from Lagos.

On Sunday, Ojukwu’s employers confirmed a chat with him after four days since he was picked up.

“I’m currently in Abuja; I am at the NPF-NCCC – that’s the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre. I arrived this morning, and I was taken into a cell. All I know is that I’m in Abuja. This is the first time I’ve been given my phone since Wednesday. They (the NPF-NCCC agents) said that they were going to ask me questions. So, I’m waiting,” an FIJ report on Sunday quoted Ojukwu as saying.

“One such article, titled ‘How Gbajabiamila Attempted to Corner $30bn, 66 Houses Special Investigator Traced to Sabiu,’ caught the attention of authorities and led to Olatunji’s detention.”

But Olatunji, while refuting this in a statement, described the report as tales by the moonlight.

“It’s all nothing but tales by the moonlight told to burnish their already battered image following their unfortunate involvement in a politically motivated matter in their desperate bid to please their civilian overlords. Anyone familiar with the DIA’s modus operandi knows it’s usually an admixture of subtle threat, naked threat, and outright force,” his statement partly read.

He said the DIA should be bold enough to tell Nigerians where such an “emergency press conference” occurred and when. “They should also mention the various media organisations that covered their imaginary press conference,” he added.

He further narrated his ordeal during his detention, saying, “Gentlemen, I’m still struggling to recover from the trauma of my abduction and illegal detention in the DIA underground cell for those 14 hellish days.”

On February 22, a journalist with the Whistler Newspaper in Abuja, Kasarachi Aniagolu, was released from police custody after the female reporter was arrested the previous day by the anti-violence crime unit of the Nigerian Police Force while covering a raid on Bureau De Change operators in the Wuse Zone 4 area of Abuja.

She was arrested alongside 95 forex traders.

In a statement announcing her release, the newspaper said Aniagolu was detained for about eight hours.

“Thanks to the collective efforts of media outlets, human rights organisations, and concerned individuals who amplified the injustice of her arrest. Ms Aniagolu was released on Wednesday night after approximately eight hours of illegal detention at the Anti-Violence Crime Unit of the Nigerian Police Force in Guzape, Abuja,” the statement said.

Last December, the Media Foundation for West Africa condemned the arrest of a journalist, Achadu Idibia, of Daybreak Newspapers and called on the judicial authorities of Kaduna State to dismiss all charges against him.

On November 13, 2023, Idibia was arrested in Kaduna, questioned over a report he published and detained in a correctional facility. The journalist’s September 24, 2023 publication was titled “Kaduna Hajj camp, a national shame, men, women sleep together in overcrowded hall – investigation.”

The MFWA, therefore, called on the authorities to end the case, which violated the journalist’s rights, and to release him unconditionally.

Also, it was reported in December that the staff of Abuja Development Control and members of the Federal Capital Territory Task Force allegedly manhandled, beat, arrested, and detained Godwin Tsa, who is a journalist with Daily Sun while covering a peaceful protest by Abuja mechanics and spare parts dealers.

According to the newspaper, Tsa, who conspicuously displayed his staff identity card on his neck, had pleaded with his attackers that he was not part of the protesters but only carrying out his legitimate work. But his plea fell on deaf ears as he was arrested and hauled in a Police Hilux pick-up truck alongside some of the protesters and taken to the Utako police station, where he was eventually locked up in a cell with criminals.

Daily Post reported that Onitsha faced charges in the Federal High Court, Abuja, for alleged cyberstalking in suit numbered FJC/ABJ/CR/492/2023 between the Inspector-General of Police as the complainant and Mienapamo Onitsha Saint as the defendant. He was later remanded in Kuje Correctional Centre following his arraignment.

In October, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement urging authorities in Nigeria to immediately and unconditionally release Onitsha, swiftly drop all charges against him, and stop criminalising the press.

The Coalition for Whistleblowers Protection and Press Freedom in February condemned the arrest and detention of two journalists by the Kwara State Police Command.

On February 7, the editor-in-chief and managing editor of Informant247, an online media outfit, Salihu Ayatullahi and Adisa-Jaji Azeez, respectively, were reportedly charged in a Magistrate’s Court over reports published on November 10, 2023, and February 1, 2024, regarding an alleged corruption in Kwara State Polytechnic.

The journalists were charged with conspiracy under section 27(1)(b), cyberstalking under section 24(1)(b) of Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act, and defamation under section 393 of the penal code.

The CWPPF condemned  incessant harassment of the newsroom and urged the police to drop all charges against the two journalists.

In October 2023, CPJ urged authorities in Nigeria to drop charges against publishers of the independent news websites,  Just Event Online and The Satcom Media, Babatunde AbdulRazaq and Oluwatoyin  Bolakale.

During this era, the Abacha regime proved to be a formidable adversary, establishing alarming precedents in its mistreatment of the press. Its tactics included arbitrary detentions, secret military trials, police brutality, enforced disappearances, bombings of media offices, and censorship through bans and seizures of publications.

The reverberations of the regime’s assault on independent journalism were felt across the West African sub-region, leading to an unprecedented decline in press freedom.

In a chilling incident in February 1997, Nigerian security forces abducted a publisher of Razor magazine, Moshood Fayemiwo, in broad daylight from neighbouring Benin. Fayemiwo endured months of torture and solitary confinement, chained to a pipe, until his eventual release in September. This brazen act underscored the impunity with which security agents operated under the Abacha regime.

A Treason and Treasonable Offenses Decree No. 29 of 1993 was used in 1995 by a special military tribunal to convict journalists Kunle Ajibade, Chris Anyanwu, George M’bah, and Ben Charles-Obi for critical reports that did not go down well with the military. The four journalists, who were later released by another government, would have served 15-year prison terms if Abacha were still in power.

In a narrative originally published in TheNEWS shortly after his release from the three-year incarceration and culled on Sunday from    https://www.refworld.org, Ajibade recounted his experiences in an interview with the then Assistant Editor of TheNEWS, Adegbenro Adebanjo.

“I was taken to Makurdi on October 18, 1995. I was not allowed the use of a mosquito net, and that place is mosquito-infested because it is a stone’s throw from the Senie River. They only allowed the net in September 1997. I received chloroquine injections at the end of every month. To this day, I don’t really know what effect the monthly dose will have on my health.

“The meals we received were very poor. We were fed gabsar (corn meal). In the morning, it was kunnu (a non-alcoholic beverage made from corn), and in the afternoon, another corn-based meal. The same thing was repeated in the evening. People were dying because of the poor facilities and the feeding. And when people around me were dying just like that, I felt dehumanised and unsafe. There was no medical care until December 18, 1997, after the death of Maj. Gen. Shehu Yar’Adua. Then the government sent two doctors regularly to give me checkups,” he said in the interview republished by refworld.

But a human rights lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, posted on his X handle on Saturday and said the provision would not stand a test in court.

“The provisions of the infamous Section 24 of the Cybercrimes (Prevention and Prohibition) Act, 2015, that the police have been using to harass Nigerians have been repealed by the National Assembly and replaced with a radically different and new provision. President Tinubu assented to the amended Act in February 2024.

“Under the new Act, posts injurious to a person’s reputation are no longer a crime,” he wrote.

In an interview with our correspondent, the General Secretary of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, Gerald Katchy, said that, according to the constitution, any person who was arrested by the law enforcement agency for the commission of a crime must be brought before a court within “24-48 hours.”

“This means that a police officer can detain you for a maximum of 24 hours. It is illegal to detain an accused or suspect beyond the constitutional provision without a court order, and to deny such a person access to his lawyer, family, or anyone is criminal and a breach of the person’s fundamental rights,” he told The PUNCH.

He said if the journalist had not been invited before his arrest, “the police’s actions in abducting this journalist is an infringement and one too many, which is condemnable. Infringements like this give room to protest, as seen in 2020. I therefore call for his release immediately or charge to court forthwith.”

Attacks on the press in 1996

“CWPPF condemns the arrest and continued detention of Mr Ojukwu. Arbitrary arrest and detention of journalists remain unacceptable as it negates the basic principles of democracy.

“The arrest and continued detention of Mr Ojukwu is not only a violation of his fundamental human rights but also an assault on press freedom,” the coalition in a statement signed by Deputy Director, CJID, Busola Ajibola, partly said.

Global human rights organisation, Amnesty International, on Saturday also called on the Nigerian police to release Ojukwu, saying, “Amnesty International is deeply concerned by the arrest of Daniel Ojukwu — a journalist with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism.”

“The Nigeria Police @PoliceNG must immediately release Daniel Ojukwu and end this relentless attack on freedom of the press,”  it added.