- Arresting vendors over newspaper contents is assault on free speech
Such an occurrence should not have happened in a country with claims to adhering to the principles of democracy, rule of law and freedom of the press. These rights, guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution, were trampled upon with impunity in Owerri, the Imo State capital, on Monday, May 10. As newspaper vendors and distribution agents were working on the circulation of newspapers that day, at Number 5, Rotibi Street, Douglass Road, they were swooped on by gun-wielding operatives of the Intelligence Response Team of the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) who arrested no less than seven of them.
Their alleged offence was that they were circulating newspapers that published stories on the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). It has also been reported that the circulation manager of the New Telegraph newspaper in the state, Chuks Uguibe, had earlier been arrested in Orlu, last week, and remained in detention in an undisclosed security facility in the state.
Although, the vendors and distribution agents were arrested by operatives of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), this was clearly with the complicity of the Imo State government as can be insinuated from a text message credited to the state’s commissioner for information, Mr. Declan Emelumba. In his words, “The Imo State government did not order arrest of the vendors. The exercise was purely a security operation by security operatives obviously for informed security reasons. However, the arrested vendors have been released”.
The release of the vendors as claimed by the commissioner is no mitigation for their unlawful and unjustified arrest in the first place. An elected government like that of Imo has no business rationalising the conduct of the security operatives, which it claimed was “for informed security reasons”. This is a regression to the experience under the military when unspecified ‘security reasons’ were routinely cited as justification for clamping down on the press and repressing free speech.
According to the Chairman, Nigerian Newspapers Distribution Association, Imo State Chapter, Ikechukwu Tasie, “The harassment of our members started last two weeks…If the government is saying don’t sell this particular papers because of insecurity, let us know, let us interface on how to solve this whole issue…Do you know that even the government-owned newspapers, Statesman newspapers, were confiscated?”.
Ikechukwu Tasie obviously spoke under pressure. The government has no powers to prevent the circulation of any newspaper for purported security breaches that are arbitrary and unspecified. Newspapers that publish stories that jeopardise the security of the state should be brought before the law with concrete charges against them. The state cannot be the accuser and the judge in a law abiding society.
Ironically, agents of IPOB have also been reported as harassing vendors and publications accused of publishing anti-IPOB stories. This means that both the Imo State government and the Nigeria Police Force have not risen to a higher moral level than IPOB in this respect. It is unrealistic for the government to seek to repress the publication of activities of IPOB when the banned organisation continues to be blamed by the same government for widespread disruptive activities across the South-East.
Repression of the media for publishing stories on IPOB cannot be a substitute for the government living up to its responsibility of effectively protecting the lives and property of citizens within its sphere of jurisdiction. Director of the International Press Centre, Mr. Lanre Arogundade, put it quite succinctly and poignantly when he said, “Arresting vendors for the content of newspapers they sell is a new dimension to the assault on freedom of expression in Nigeria. It also marks targeting of people’s means of livelihood in the name of fighting the proscribed IPOB, both of which are not acceptable”.
We find this submission unimpeachable even though this is without prejudice to the responsibility of the media to place the country’s security interests at the top of their professional decision-making processes.
