Published on 3 May 2006
22 September 2009 - Police urged to consider all possibilities in newspaper editor’s murder
6 July 2009 - Release of two journalists arrested by Kano state police
2 July 2009 - Physical attacks, threats and arrests highlight media’s urgent need for better climate
Nigerian journalists, accustomed to cruel military juntas and police raids, have good reason to be disappointed. The restitution of power to a civilian government, in 1999, under former military figure President Olusegun Obansanjo, has not protected them from political persecution or abuses by the infamous State Security Service (SSS). Around 20 journalists suffered physical attacks in 2005, around a score spent time in prison. The hospital or the police station are often a forced part of a Nigerian journalist’s rounds.
Meanwhile, the head of state, holding the rotating presidency of the African Union (AU), promoted himself to be the continent’s “peace-maker”. Deaf to the appeals of international organisations for greater democratisation, unmoved by repeated press freedom violations, he is a poor manager of a diverse federation made up, among others, of an oil-rich delta in the south and a northern region now under the sway of fundamentalist imams.
The privately-owned press is robust, pluralist and populist. It does not mince its words about the powerful. Its outspokenness, won through years of “guerrilla journalism”, secret meetings and under-the-counter distribution, is general.
In September 2001, the Eritrean government ordered that all of the country’s privately owned publications be closed down. In the days that followed, police arrested above fifteen or so journalists and took them to Asmara’s police station No.
