The group condemned the arrest and detention of two journalists working with Sobi FM, Dare Akogun and Abdulrasheed Akogun, by the Kwara State Command of the Nigeria Police Force.
A human rights group, Community Outreach for Development and Welfare Advocacy (CODWA), has decried the repression of journalists in Nigeria by security agencies, especially the police.
The group condemned the arrest and detention of two journalists working with Sobi FM, Dare Akogun and Abdulrasheed Akogun, by the Kwara State Command of the Nigeria Police Force.
The detained journalists are brothers.
In a statement titled "Arrest Of Kwara Journalists: Police Under Colonial Hangover," and signed by its Executive Director, Comrade Taiwo Otitolaye, CODWA described the arrest as a display of "primitive power and repression reminiscences of the colonial administration in Nigeria during the Native Authority."
It said that during the colonial era, the police usually betrayed their responsibility of protecting the citizens, adding that they rather engaged in hunting them. He, therefore, asked how long it would take to reform the policing system in Nigeria.
The statement reads, "Rather than uphold loyalty to the state, protect the rights of citizens as contained in the 1999 Constitution (As Amended), and International instruments to which Nigeria is a signatory; the Police prefers to continue to be minion to Political office holders against the citizenry.
"These uncivilized attitudes have continued to shrink civic space, and have been one of the threats to the democratic process and reforms in Nigeria.
"The Kwara State government wanted the journalists to retract their stories and apologise; this is hilarious and could be likened to one of James Hardley Chase’s books titled 'The Guilty are afraid.'"
The group lamented that the case of the Akoguns has become worrisome, considering that the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, a practising journalist, wrote the commissioner of police to arrest his colleagues over "farcical, petty and Illusionary exigencies”.
CODWA, however, warned that if the citizens are silent over the subjugation of their fundamental rights of expression, "the Kwara State government would hang white albatrosses around their necks as a mark of victory over justice!"
The group vowed to stand with the media and press freedom; while expressing its solidarity with the detained journalists.
The governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Mallam Rafiu Ajakaye, through a petition to the Commissioner of Police, accused the brothers of inciting the public against the state government.
Ajakaye alleged that AbdulRasheed posted a comment on a WhatsApp platform, Kwara Commission, accusing the government of corruption and of using N15 million to prosecute the last election of the state’s chapter of the Nigerian Union of Journalists.