-How Oladimeji Abitogun was Detained for 2 Hours at Airport
DESPITE the refrain of tolerance by the Goodluck Jonathan government, a citizen’s Monday evening
experience at the hands of security agents stationed at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos is the latest proof that the legacy of autocratic harassment of citizens, no thanks to the military era, remains with Nigeria.
Mr. Oladimeji Abitogun, journalist and publisher/editor-in-chief of sharpedgenews.com, was on his way out of the country for a duly scheduled flight to his base in Kansas City in the United States when he was accosted by officers of the Directorate of State Security, who requested to have a word with him this evening.
What Mr. Abitogun thought would be a short inconvenience ended up being a two-hour detention at the Directorate’s office at the airport, where he was never afforded the comfort of a seat, in spite of his physical disabilities.
He was also treated to the indignity of being tagged an ‘American agent’ by his interrogators, who mostly engaged him in a session replete with banal, offensive questioning.
Monday’s detention was not the first of such encounters by the online news publisher, who experienced a similar treatment upon his entry into the country on October 20. Frantic efforts to reach notable government officials as government spokesman Dr. Reuben Abati proved abortive, as all calls made to his phone went unanswered.
According to Mr. Abitogun, practically every trip he makes in or out of the country has the same ugly experience of security agents constituting themselves into a menace. Yet, the journalist does not have any criminal record of any kind, at home or abroad.
The harassment of journalists in Nigeria is one of the few stubborn realities that remain with Nigerian governments, despite best assurances by the Goodluck Jonathan administration in particular that the rights of the press would be respected.
It is disappointing that at a time when debilitating security challenges exist around the country – when the mother of a serving minister of finance gets kidnapped by ransom-seeking hoodlums in broad daylight – it is harmless journalists who are diligently pursuing their vocation who get targeted by security agents.
To date, no one in government has deemed it deserving for Nigerian citizens to know the details of the kidnap of the elderly Mrs. Okonjo. Who kidnapped her? How was her release effected? What precisely is the government doing to prevent future occurrences?
Instead what we see is the harassment of law-abiding citizens by security agents with nothing better to do. Other journalists, too, have endured similar harassment by security agents during their travels in or out of the country. One such event was the January 2011 experience of ace columnist, Dr. Okey Ndibe, who was detained and had his international passports confiscated for a while before he was later released and his travel documents returned to him.
Mr. Abitogun’s experience also follows the recent case of two Al-Mizan journalists, Mssrs. Aliyu Saleh and Musa Mohammed, who were detained for days without charges while on professional assignment.
An active campaign spearheaded by their colleagues online and offline around the world no doubt caused the State Security Service to release the duo on Tuesday afternoon. While the news of their release is welcome, the manner of their arrest is disturbing.
If Nigeria is to be the civilized, free country that President Jonathan says his government wants it to be, Nigerian citizens should never be subject to the whims of security agents stationed around the country. Every citizen, including members of the Fourth Estate, should have their constitutional rights protected.
Until when these rights are protected and seen to be protected, the government and the president himself will only be paying lip-service to human rights. The Goodluck Jonathan Administration owes it to itself and the Nigerian people to rid itself of the old mentality of insecurity that informs the kind of behavior displayed by its security agents.