The arrests of journalists call for vigilance
The freedom of the mass media to uphold at all times “the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people” as guaranteed by Section 22 of the Constitution has not yet come under sustained assault, but some recent actions by state security officials and the Federal Government give cause for concern that it is being slowly attenuated.
About two weeks ago, operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) detained a reporter, Tony Ezimakor, of the Daily Independent, following publication of a story that the Buhari Administration had secretly paid millions of dollars to secure the release on May 17, 2017 of some of the Chibok girls abducted by Boko Haram insurgents back in 2014.
Ezimakor’s story also suggested, based on his reporting, that ransom payments have become a lucrative source of extra income for Nigerian and Swiss intelligence officers who participated in the negotiations for Boko Haram hostages.
The DSS asked Ezimakor to name his sources, failing which they would keep him until he complied. In the finest tradition of journalism, Ezimakor refused. Following protests by the local and international media and an alert civil society, the DSS released him after one week. We may not have heard the last of this incident yet.
Even in criminal prosecutions, it has become settled law that reporters cannot be compelled to reveal their sources unless the information sought is of central relevance to the case, and there is no other way of obtaining the information.
The reason is plain. If sources cannot rest in the assurance that their identities will be protected, they will not be forthcoming, and the media will not operate as a bulwark against the abuses of power and privilege.
The DSS ignored these protections and followed the easier, extra-judicial path of intimidation. This recourse is incompatible with the law of the Constitution.
Shortly after Ezimakor’s arrest, the police arrested Daily Trust reporter Musa Kirshi right on his beat at the National Assembly, and took him to the Force Criminal Investigation Department, in Garki, Abuja, for questioning.
The arrest, police said, stemmed from a complaint lodged with the police authorities in Kano, that Kirshi had “facilitated” an editorial advertisement that Jigawa State Governor Abubakar Badaru found offensive. However that term is construed, it is not a crime under the law. The police should have advised Governor Badaru to seek redress in court.
Kirshi’s detention lasted two hours, but it should not have happened at all. The manner the police employed was brusque and indefensible. Daily Trust was right to deplore it as an unwarranted act of intimidation, and to demand an apology.
The attentive public was still weighing the implications of these intrusions when the most vibrant sections of the Nigerian print and broadcast media were barred from covering President Muhammadu Buhari’s belated visit to Benue State to comfort the residents and assure them of government’s protection following the orgy of bloodletting launched by cattle herders on farming communities in the state.
The media outlets included The PUNCH, ThisDay, Vanguard, Tribune, New Telegraph, The NATION, Channels TV, and AIT. No credible reason was given for their exclusion.
The ban only added to the desultoriness that marked the visit. Buhari made very little contact with the people he had come to empathise with, in or outside Makurdi, the state capital; not with mourning families, not with internally displaced persons, and not with traditional rulers. The whole thing lasted less than two hours.
The peremptoriness can be excused in part on the ground that the President was scheduled to receive the visiting United States Secretary of State (as he then was) Rex Tillerson in Abuja that day. Still, ways could have been found to make the President’s visit more meaningful. An unwieldy posse of reporters might have been difficult to accommodate in the cramped environment of Government House, but ways could have been found not to antagonise reporters carrying out a duty prescribed by the Constitution.
It would be premature to regard the arrest and detention of Ezimakor of the Daily Independent and Musa Kirshi of Daily Trust, and the shabby treatment of reporters dispatched to cover Buhari’s visit, as dark portents of an imminent clampdown on the media.
But we have a duty to be vigilant.
