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- Says 6 journalists, others arrested in one month
From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) in a report titled “Misuse of Power: Turning the Instruments of Policing Authority into Instrumentality of Repression and Vendetta”, the police have been accused of becoming a willing tool in the hands of state governors and other political actors in the southeastern part of the country to harass, arrest, put into indefinite detention, and issue threats of imprisonment to journalists and activists in the zone.
In a statement issued by the RULAAC’s Executive Director, Okechukwu Nwanguma, the report decried that attacks on media practitioners, activists, and other civic actors, are on the rise in Nigeria with recent reports of increasing spate of repressive attacks in SouthEast Nigeria.
It disclosed that in the last one month alone, no less than six journalists and other civic actors in Imo and Enugu States of the South-East have faced police harassment, arrest, indefinite detention, and threats of imprisonment as tactics of intimidation by the police, acting at the behest of state governors and other aggrieved public officials.
RULAAC is gravely concerned that state governments and public officials are hiding under the cover of laws and statutes and false narratives to target and hound independent media, activists and critical voices, and stiffling civic freedoms. We are even the more concerned that the police who are established and employed to serve and protect the people and to serve as the guardians of civil liberties have become willing tools in the hands of oppressive public officials to harass and intimidate civic actors and advance authoritarian and repressive tactics.
These incidents highlighted above validate the findings in a research report by the Action Group on Free Civic Space (AGFCS) entitled ‘ _Shrinking Civic Space in the Name of Security_ ‘. The report, the third in a series on Security Playbook, published in February 2022 documents, as the Executive Director of Spaces for Change, Victoria Ibezim-Ohaeri put it, ”how the Nigerian state has used its security and counterterrorism architecture to stifle civil society, discourage active civic participation, and chill civic space’.
It describes ‘how extensively the state has used securitization to limit civil society and disenable the environment for active civic participation in Nigeria’.
It demonstrates ‘how state actors are overreaching their regulatory and law enforcement powers to crush civil liberties’.
Indeed, hiding under the ruse of law enforcement and false narratives, police and other security agencies are increasingly cracking down on journalists whose reports are critical of government policies or actions or are considered unfavorable to government officials. As can be seen from the documented cases, the Cybercrime law is one of the several laws that the police frequently hide behind to crackdown on journalists and activists.
Section 24 (1) of the Cyber Crime (Prohibition, Prevention) Act 2015 states, “Any person who knowingly or intentionally sends a message or other materials through a computer system or network that is grossly offensive, pornographic or of an indecent, obscene or mincing character or causes any such message, matter to be sent or he knows to be false, to cause annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill-will or needless anxiety to another or causes such a message to be sent “ is guilty of an offence upon conviction carries a greater penalty of N7m or imprisonment for a term, not more than three years or both.
Section 24 subsection 1 of the Cybercrime Act broadly defines cyberstalking, and this clause has been deployed by aggrieved persons to call for the arrest of journalists and persons who released information about them even if the information is true.
The lack of a clear definition of these acts in the laws creates opportunity for the misuse of the Act and blurres the line between freedom of expression and defamation.
It was in a bid to cure this problem that the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) filed an action before the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court seeking the nullification of Section 24 of Nigeria’s Cybercrime Act for being vague, arbitrary and unlawful.
The ECOWAS Court gave a ruling asserting that Section 24 of the Cybercrime Act is contrary to the rule of law; therefore, the Nigeria Police cannot charge anyone with cyberstalking based on the provision of Section 24.
RULAAC called on the Inspector General of Police to make a public pronouncement that the Nigeria Police is a police force of democracy committed to protecting human rights and operating in accordance with the highest democratic policing values and standards.
It also urged the IGP to direct that police officers must at all times comply strictly with the directive standardizing police investigation processes which prohibits arbitraty transfer of cases from state Commands or Formations to the Force Headquarters without prior approval by the IGP.
It further called on the IGP should order the release of all persons arrested and still being detained beyond the legally permissible duration, particularly Mr. Theodore Chinonso Uba, aka Nonso Nkwa, and to halt further harassment of journalists including the Enugu journalists who are being invited to the Force Headquarters over reports that the School of Mental Health Nursing, Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Enugu was unlawfully closed down by its Medical Director, Dr. Monday Nwite Igwe, instead of allowing the Enugu State Police Command or the Force Criminal Investigation Department Annex, Enugu to investigate if there are credible allegations of any offences they may have committed.
There were also reports of corruption in the management of the School of Mental Health Nursing, Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Enugu.
