Daniel Ojukwu is an investigative journalist in Nigeria.
Basis for Investigative Journalism
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Basis for Investigative Journalism
Daniel Ojukwu is an investigative journalist in Nigeria.
Basis for Investigative Journalism
LAGOS, Nigeria — An investigative journalist in Nigeria has been arrested by police and held with out cost for over per week, resulting in rising fears for his security. His case has additionally ignited criticism from media and advocacy teams on the worsening local weather for unbiased journalism in Africa’s most populous nation.
Police arrested 26-year-old Daniel Ojukwu on Could 1 in Lagos. He was reported lacking the next day by his colleagues at Nigeria’s Basis for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), after family and friends have been unable to achieve him by cellphone. FIJ employed non-public investigators who discovered his final location earlier than he was arrested, main journalists to demand solutions from Nigerian police.
Police solely confirmed his detention on Sunday, days after transferring him to the capital, Abuja, the place he has been accused of violating the Cybercrime Act, a controversial legislation that offers the Nigerian authorities broad powers to control perceived on-line offenses. It has been criticized by Amnesty Worldwide as a method of punishing journalists and undermining the correct to freedom of speech.
The detention follows investigative reporting by Ojukwu and colleagues revealing corruption implicating senior Nigerian officers. A presidency official, Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, who was tasked with attaining the United Nations’ Sustainable Improvement Objectives, allegedly ordered the switch of greater than $106,000 of presidency funds to a restaurant within the capital, in keeping with Ojukwu’s reporting. The funds had been budgeted for the creation of a faculty constructing and studying heart however, in keeping with Ojukwu’s report, the services have been by no means created. Orelope-Adefulire has not responded to the allegations.
Fisayo Soyombo, the founding father of FIJ, described Ojuwku’s arrest — two days earlier than the Could 3 World Press Freedom Day — as an “abduction.” “I exploit this phrase very fastidiously as a result of they by no means invited him to deal with issues in regards to the story in query. As a substitute, they tracked him, picked him and held him,” he stated.
As of Wednesday, per week after he was taken, Nigerian police had not interrogated Ojukwu on the story he produced, or questioned him for any alleged crime, Soyombo stated, including that FIJ made contact with Ojukwu on Sunday by cellphone. “All they’ve carried out is dump him in a cell.” Police didn’t reply to NPR’s requests for remark.
Ojukwu’s arrest was an extra signal of the “horrible” local weather for unbiased journalism in Nigeria.
“If a journalist might be kidnapped due to that story, I believe anybody unsure can see clearly that Nigeria at present runs a fake democracy,” Soyombo stated.
Soyombo can be being investigated by police for reporting in February that exposed alleged collusion between senior Nigerian police, customs officers and smugglers, within the motion of arms and meals objects throughout Nigeria’s border with Benin. A member of FIJ’s board was then questioned by Nigerian police in April, the group stated.
On Wednesday, the Committee to Defend Journalists (CPJ) launched an announcement urging authorities in Nigeria to “instantly launch journalist Daniel Ojukwu and cease intimidating and arresting members of the press who examine the federal government’s spending of public funds.”
“The Nigerian police’s investigation into such a good media outlet demonstrates the alarming extent to which they’re prepared to go to silence journalists looking for to show crime,” stated Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program.
Ojukwu’s case is the newest in a rising variety of arrests of journalists over the past yr underneath President Bola Tinubu’s authorities. Final month, one other journalist, Segun Olatunji, was arrested and detained for 2 weeks by the Nigerian army, following a report revealing alleged corruption by the president’s chief of workers, Femi Gbajabiamila. He was launched final week with out cost and instructed native media he had been stripped, blindfolded and detained by officers.
Numerous media teams in Nigeria, together with the Nigerian Union of Journalists, launched a joint assertion urging the federal government to cease utilizing “repressive ways.” Nigeria is one in all West Africa’s most harmful and tough nations for journalists, who’re commonly monitored, attacked and arbitrarily arrested, in keeping with Reporters With out Borders, which ranked Nigeria 112th out of 180 nations for press freedom.
