The Department of State Services (DSS) intends to arrest ‘Fisayo Soyombo, founder and editor-in-chief of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (EQ) “anytime from now”, EQ has been told.

According to a security source who was speaking with EQ on Wednesday, Soyombo will be arrested by the DSS “any moment from now, as soon his whereabouts can be traced”.

EQ could not immediately establish why the DSS would be after Soyombo, or if it is because of his work as an investigative/undercover reporter, as a social critic on microblogging platform X or as the founder of EQ, an online newspaper that exposes injustice and holds the government to account.

READ ALSO: Undercover as a Smuggler

Soyombo’s recent investigations include an undercover investigation on smuggling and gunrunning titled ‘Undercover As A Smuggler’, which he then followed up with a series of ‘good morning’ tweets. A number of Soyombo’s ‘good morning’ tweets — a series of early-morning notes drawing public attention to the rot in the customs service — indicted numerous officers, including a Member of the Order of the Federal Republic (MFR) and current Comptroller-General of Customs (CGC); Hussein Ejibunu, the then Controller, Federal Operations Unit Zone A, Ikeja, Lagos; Ahmadu Shuaibu, the then Controller of Ogun 1 Area Command of the NCS; and also IBD Dende who was filmed threatening to kill an Assistant Superintendent of Customs (ASC) who stopped the smuggling of his goods from Benin Republic into Nigeria.

READ ALSO: Nigeria Customs Removes Ejigbunu After Several ‘Good Morning’ Tweets

Soyombo’s recent criticisms on X often feature the disrepute to which the DSS has fallen, being a state security service that has now become a tool for hounding journalists and activists.

The DSS blaming its Juwon Soyinka’s passport seizure and detention on ‘mistaken identity’ has to be the joke of the year.
The country’s foremost intelligence agency lacks the compentence to properly identify its targets?
The logical redress would be a public apology to Juwon,…
— ‘Fisayo Soyombo (@fisayosoyombo) August 31, 2024

Hardship protests by Nigerians – DSS intervention, arrests.
Journalist’s exposé on unregistered sachet water factory in Sokoto – DSS intervention, arrest (of journalist — not factory owner).
NLC’s planned anti-petrol price hike protest – DSS intervention, arrest of NLC…
— ‘Fisayo Soyombo (@fisayosoyombo) September 9, 2024

EQ itself continues to execute the kind of critical reporting that the Bola Tinubu administration has proven to be unable to tolerate. Only on Wednesday, EQ reported how Oluremi Tinubu, Nigeria’s first lady, received N700 million from the state house to purchase dollars for foreign trips between November and March. This is despite claiming at an event before Tinubu’s inauguration in 2023 that her family was blessed and they did not need Nigeria’s wealth.

READ ALSO: Remi Tinubu Receives N700m From State House to Buy Dollars for Foreign Trips in 5 Months

It is the first time Soyombo will be on the radar of the DSS, his recent detentions by the security forces having been with the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Monitoring Unit in December 2021 and the Nigeria Police Force National Cyber Crime Centre (NPF-NCCC) in August 2024. In both cases, he willingly honoured police invitations but he was detained and subsequently released on bail.

Back in 2016, the Nigerian army accused him of committing subversion an offence punishable with death in military regimes, following his five-part investigative series on the plight of soldiers who got injured while fighting Boko Haram but were abandoned by the military and the government.

Also, in 2019, after he went undercover to penetrate Pedro Police Station and Ikoyi Prison, where he spent two weeks as a ‘suspect’ and an inmate respectively to expose corruption and malfeasance in Nigeria’s criminal justice system, the Nigeria Immigrations Service (NIS) mulled arresting him, only making an about-face following public outcry.
The post ALERT: DSS Planning to Arrest EQ Founder ‘Fisayo Soyombo appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.