Media Rights Agenda (MRA), a non-governmental organisation promoting press freedom, has asked Inspector-General of Police Kayode Egbetokun to stop the police’s harassment of journalists and “the obvious abuse of police powers” in Nigeria.

MRA noted on Monday that the consistent failure to stop police harassment in the past has created a climate of impunity among officers.

EQ saw a statement from MRA on Monday citing yet another instance of the police’s harassment of Nigerian journalists:

Media Rights Agenda (MRA) today condemned the incessant harassment and intimidation of journalists, saying recent incidents of abductions, arbitrary arrests, detention and other forms of attacks against media professionals by security and law enforcement agencies have reached alarming levels and are posing a grave danger to media freedom and democracy in Nigeria.

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Describing the harassment and intimidation of journalists by the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and other security agencies as relentless, MRA cited as the latest examples of this trend, the cases of Ayomide Eweje, Managing Editor of “Alimosho Today”, a community news outlet based in Lagos; a former reporter with the news organisation, Wisdom Okezie, and the publisher, Oluwamodupe Akinola, who have been asked by the police to report to the office of the Assistant Inspector-General (AIG) of Police, Zone 2 Command in Onikan, Lagos, tomorrow, August 27, 2024, to “facilitate” an undisclosed investigation.

The three were invited through separate letters dated August 22, 2024, signed by Martin Nwogoh, a deputy commissioner of police, on behalf of the AIG in charge of Zone 2 headquarters of the Nigeria Police, claiming that the office was “investigating a matter reported to the Assistant Inspector-General of Police” without saying who reported the matter or what information was required from those being invited to enable them prepare adequately.

The deputy police commissioner asked Eweje, Okezie and Akinola to report to the officer in charge of the Zonal Monitoring Unit, stressing that “this is a fact-finding exercise in the interest of justice and fairness”.

In a statement issued in Lagos by Obioma Okonkwo, the head of its legal department, MRA said the failure of the police to provide details in the letter of invitation was an ambush, adding that it had identified a pattern in numerous such invitations by the police designed to lure journalists to the police station only to detain them when they report in response to the supposed invitation.

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Saying that it was curious that the police had become the weapon of choice for public officials and other rich or powerful individuals seeking to silence and punish journalists who publish negative reports about them, Obioma said: “It seems that the police now consider journalism a crime such that anybody who is unhappy about any report published by the media is able to get the police to hunt down any journalist involved with uncommon zeal even as real criminals go about their business unchallenged for the most part.”

According to her, it is also clear that whenever such complaints are made to the police over media reporting, although the police frequently claim to be investigating the complaints as their justification for summoning journalists, detaining them or charging them to court, no investigation is ever conducted to verify the truth or otherwise of the stories or articles published by journalists that resulted in the complaint made against them.

Okonkwo called on the IGP Kayode Egbetokun to put measures in place to stop the obvious abuse of Police powers noting that the consistent failure to check the practice in the past had created a climate of impunity as most police officers now feel confident that there will be no negative consequences for them which has in turn emboldened many and resulted in an upsurge of unjustifiable harassment of journalists.
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