Nearly a dozen Nigerian journalists have been detained or sued for the same accusation in the past year.
The Nigerian Police Force Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) on Tuesday detained the Executive Director of the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR), Dayo Aiyetan, and an investigative journalist with the platform, Nurudeen Akewushola, for over nine hours.
Both journalists honoured the invitation of the police and arrived at the NPF-NCCC office at noon on Tuesday but were held and only released after 9 p.m.
The newspaper had raised an alarm and journalists and activists immediately took to social media and berated the police, even as they called for their immediate release.
A human rights lawyer, Deji Adeyanju, who accompanied the two journalists to the police alongside their lawyers, told PREMIUM TIMES that they were granted bail, adding that the police suggested that the journalists would again be invited on a later date.
“I was released on bail and asked to come back on June 11,” Mr Akewushola told PREMIUM TIMES on Wednesday, adding that the police insisted on knowing his sources for his story which drew their attention.
Mr Akewushola said the police claimed they had received a petition, in which he and the ICIR were accused of ‘cyberstalking and defamation’, a popular accusation Nigerian authorities have used to clamp down on journalists and activists.
Close to a dozen Nigerian journalists have been detained or sued for the same accusation in the past year.
Early this month, Daniel Ojukwu, a journalist with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), spent nine days in police custody after he was slammed with similar accusations. Mr Ojuwu was ‘abducted’ and initially held incommunicado before his family got wind of where he was detained. He was transferred from Lagos to Abuja.
ICIR ordeal
Like Mr Ojukwu, Messrs Aiyetan and Akewushola’s ordeal began with a petition written against them for a story they published, which exposed corruption.
The ICIR had in February published a story authored by Mr Akewushola detailing how two former Inspectors General of the NPF and other senior personnel of the force were accused of bribery in a shady land sale of designated police barracks.
The story, according to the ICIR, was culled from affidavits and testimonies of parties in an ongoing court case involving the subjects of the story.
On 17 May, one of the subjects of the story, the Chairperson of the Police Service Commission (PSC) Solomon Arase, a former Inspector General of Police, said he would file a lawsuit against the ICIR journalist, the editor, Victoria Bamas, and the Executive Director, Mr Aiyetan. Mr Arase announced the lawsuit through the PSC spokesperson, Ikechukwu Ani.
According to Mr Akewushola, the owner of Copran International Limited, the contractor the ICIR report indicted for being used to dupe the police force, also petitioned the same police force against the ICIR.
“The most ridiculous of it is that the petitioner told the police that I asked him for money which is absolutely not true. I believe they just came up with that to make the petition weighty,” he said.
The journalist wondered why the police is more interested in harassing the journalists rather than investigating further and prosecuting the persons exposed by the report.
“Everything we reported was backed by legally certified documents and we expect the police to be more interested in furthering the investigation and fishing out those people who are culpable as the case may be and not going after us for basically doing our civic responsibility,” he said.
“We have insisted that the police are an interested party in this case because it involves their superiors and they showed the sentiment in their interrogation. We were grilled and they insisted on knowing our sources for the story.”
Invitation, detention
Two days earlier on 15 May, the ICIR received a letter from the NPF-NCCC addressed to Mr Akeuwhola and the ‘Managing Directors’ of the ICIR, saying it is investigating a case of cyberstalking and defamation of character in which the journalists’ name “featured prominently.”
But the letter was dated 16 April and the journalist was asked to report to NCCC on 24 April. This means the journalist was expected to report at the NCCC three weeks before the letter was delivered to him.
The ICIR, therefore, raised concerns that the invitation was vague, saying it didn’t state what the police were investigating and why they needed to invite the newspaper’s officials. The platform also worries over the growing trend of the crackdown on journalists by security operatives using the Cybercrimes Act.
The NPF-NCCC delivered another letter dated 20 May and written separately to the reporter and the managing directors of the ICIR, for a ‘fact-finding invitation’ on 27 May.
However, both journalists were held incommunicado for hours until they were released after 9 p.m.
“They kept directing us from one office to another before they eventually released us,” Mr Akewushola added.
Amnesty International condemns
Meanwhile, the rights group Amnesty International has condemned the harassment of both ICIR staffers, calling on Nigerian authorities to end a culture of impunity.
“In a brazen violation of due process for hours, lawyers and family could not reach them. The Nigerian authorities must end this pattern of punishing journalists who are dedicated to ending the pervasive culture of impunity that allows corrupt practices to go unpunished,” the statement posted on X noted.