Human rights groups say there have been multiple attacks on media workers since Bola Tinubu became president last year. Photographer: Gina Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images
ohOn a recent hot afternoon, five men with rifles approached Daniel Ojukwu on a Lagos street, showed him a detention warrant bearing his full name, and forced him into a car.
They were police officers in Abuja, Nigeria. He is an investigative journalist.
At the State Criminal Investigation Agency in Panti, Yaba County, Lagos, the men handcuffed Ojukwu from behind and emptied his pockets. They did not allow him to call his lawyer or family and held him in police custody for several days.
After his family and employers tracked him down, Ojukwu was flown from Lagos to a detention facility at the Cyber Crime Centre in Abuja.
“The prisons in Lagos and Abuja were horrible,” Ojukwu said. “I felt sick a lot.”
Following pressure from Nigerian journalists, civil society and the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, Ojukwu was released after nine nights of detention. His detention marked the 45th attack on the media since President Bola Tinubu took office in May last year.
About 62 percent of these attacks were carried out by state security forces, Edetaen Ojo said.
He heads the Nigerian press advocacy group Media Rights Agenda.
According to the Global Rights report, President Tinubu's record is likely to be worse than that of his predecessor, President Muhammadu Buhari, who arrested 189 journalists in his first eight years in power, despite Tinubu promising to protect press freedom during a meeting with newspaper owners in December.
According to the Center for Journalism Innovation and Development, 1,034 Nigerian journalists were detained between 1986 and 2023. State security forces attacked journalists 28 times in the first year of Tinubu's presidency, matching the annual average for the past 38 years, which includes periods under military rule.
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