Nigeria detains journalist Daniel Ojukwu who reported on corruption : NPR

LAGOS, Nigeria — An investigative journalist in Nigeria has been arrested by police and held with out cost for over every 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 Might 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 had 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 shifting him to the capital, Abuja, the place he has been accused of violating the Cybercrime Act, a controversial regulation that provides the Nigerian authorities broad powers to control perceived on-line offenses. It has been criticized by Amnesty Worldwide as a way of punishing journalists and undermining the proper 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 reaching the United Nations’ Sustainable Growth Targets, allegedly ordered the switch of greater than $106,000 of presidency funds to a restaurant within the capital, based on Ojukwu’s reporting. The funds had been budgeted for the creation of a faculty constructing and studying middle however, based on Ojukwu’s report, the amenities had 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 Might 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 handle considerations concerning the story in query. As an alternative, they tracked him, picked him and held him,” he stated.

As of Wednesday, every 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 accomplished 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 will be kidnapped due to that story, I feel anybody unsure can see clearly that Nigeria presently runs a faux 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 gadgets 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 Shield Journalists (CPJ) launched a press release 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 keen to go to silence journalists in search of to reveal crime,” stated Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program.

Ojukwu’s case is the newest in a rising variety of arrests of journalists during the last 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 employees, Femi Gbajabiamila. He was launched final week with out cost and advised native media he had been stripped, blindfolded and detained by officers.

Varied media teams in Nigeria, together with the Nigerian Union of Journalists, launched a joint assertion urging the federal government to cease utilizing “repressive techniques.” Nigeria is one in every of West Africa’s most harmful and tough international locations for journalists, who’re frequently monitored, attacked and arbitrarily arrested, based on Reporters With out Borders, which ranked Nigeria 112th out of 180 international locations for press freedom.