Incessant police harassment of journalists intolerable –MRA

The Media Rights Agenda (MRA) has condemned the incessant harassment and intimidation of journalists.

In a statement issued in Lagos by the head of its legal department, Ms Obioma Okonkwo, the group said recent incidents of abductions, arbitrary arrests, detention and other forms of attacks against media professionals by security and law enforcement agencies had reached alarming levels and posed a grave danger to media freedom and democracy in Nigeria.

She described the harassment and intimidation of journalists by the police and other security agencies as relentless.

MRA cited as latest examples of the trend, the cases of Ms 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, Mr Oluwamodupe Akinola, who have been asked by the Nigeria Police to report to the office of the Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Zone 2 Command in Onikan, Lagos, today, August 27, 2024, to “facilitate” an undisclosed investigation.

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The three were invited through separate letters dated August 22, 2024, signed by Mr Martin Nwogoh, a Deputy Commissioner of Police, on behalf of the AIG in charge of Zone 2 headquarters of the Nigeria Police.

The police claim that they are “investigating a matter reported to the Assistant Inspector-General of Police”, without saying who reported the matter or what information was required from those invited.

The deputy police commissioner asked Ms Eweje, Mr Okezie and Mr 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.”

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.

The body said 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.

Ms 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.

Ms Okonkwo called on the Inspector General of Police, Mr 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.