A reporter with the Daily Trust newspaper, Isa Sa’idu, has complained to the Nigerian Union of Journalists about being threatened on the phone this morning by the spokesperson of the Army’s 1 Division, Lt Colonel Abubakar Edun.
A reporter with the Daily Trust newspaper, Isa Sa’idu, has complained to the Nigerian Union of Journalists about being threatened on the phone this morning by the spokesperson of the Army’s 1 Division, Lt Colonel Abubakar Edun.
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The complaint is contained in a letter addressed to the Chairman of the Kaduna State Chapter of the NUJ by Mr. Sa’idu, who is the Bureau Chief of the Daily Trust Newspaper in the state. In it, Mr. Sa’idu recalled last week’s explosions at military formations in Kaduna, which he attempted to report along with some other journalists.
At the event, he said that some soldiers barred the journalists from entering the 1 Division and threatened them with reprisals if they did not leave the premises. They also seized the cameras belonging to their colleagues from the African Independent Television (AIT).
According to Mr. Sa’idu, that formed the subject of Lt. Col. Edu’s phone call to him this morning.
“The seizure of the cameras was widely reported by the media but I cannot figure out why Edun singled me out for questioning and even going further to issue a threat,” the reporter said in his complaint.
He said he was writing the letter in order to place the threat on the record, “especially the fact that he has categorically told me that his formation [has not been] happy with me since my days in Zaria as a reporter for Media Trust.”
Mr. Sa’idu said Lt. Col. Edun ended the call with the ominous words, “I made my point and you can go ahead to be writing whatever you like about us. This was how you were reporting us when you were in Zaria.”
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Army strongman tactics are not unknown in Nigeria, but since the country returned to civil rule, they have not often been in the news.
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