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November 30, 2024
SaharaReporters earlier reported that Fisayo was conducting an undercover investigation when the army arrested him, accusing him of carrying on illegal bunkering.
Investigative journalist, Fisayo Soyombo, has given an account of his investigation with the illegal oil bunkerers, while accusing the Nigerian Army of deliberating compromising his safety while he was on the expose.
SaharaReporters earlier reported that Fisayo was conducting an undercover investigation when the army arrested him, accusing him of carrying on illegal bunkering.
He was kept incommunicado for three days before the public outcry forced the army to release him.
“I will be honest, it is the first time I have genuinely felt my security compromised. I believe the army deliberately – the acting spokesman of the Nigerian army deliberately compromised my security by releasing that statement and linking me to oil bunkerers. I was in detention, I made no mention of oil bunkering, now you’ve gone to tell illegal bunkerers that ‘look, this guy was on your trail.”
“I am an investigative and undercover journalist. I was investigating illegal oil bunkering. It happened that someone in the security setup was offended that he didn’t get bribed because the illegal bunkerers would bribe people in security. One got annoyed and tipped off others.”
“There was no arrest, the Nigerian Army did not arrest me. They spotted me, flashed their torch, and I came out and wanted to open a conversation.”
He noted that he didn’t identify himself at the scene of the bunkering because he was told all soldiers had been settled.
“I didn’t show them my ID because the illegal bunkerers had said they had settled everyone and the guys who came were the ones that were not settled, and a conversation was going to settle them, so I just thought it was a settlement conversation and I came forward,” he added.
Fisayo defended his decision not to carry along the Nigerian Army in his investigation, according to him, he didn’t trust public institutions enough.
“The real growls of the army were that, one, I didn’t carry them along. I won’t deny that I have low trust for Nigerian public institutions – I didn’t trust the army, I didn’t carry them along, but also known illegal oil bunkerers were bribing different people with various security formations and I would endanger my life by carrying them along if I didn’t know who was who.
“They all felt I was an illegal oil bunkerer, and I played along until they took me to 6th Div. And I thought from then I was speaking with people in offices who were investigating the case; that is when I said I was an undercover journalist and showed them proof,” Soyombo said.
He insisted that the Nigerian press was not free from attacks by those in authority.
“Of course, the press is not free in a number of ways, and one of them is that, especially people in security, don’t want to hear the word ‘investigation’. Every encounter I have had with the police, the military, once I say ‘I was investigating’, something just changes in them. They don’t want the press to do any form of independent work,” he said.
His arrest had led to condemnation from different quarters.