Nigeria

From the early hours of Friday 6 June, the Nigerian army began halting the distribution of major national newspapers in what it claimed was part of a security operation. Newspapers including the Leadership, Daily Trust, The Nation and The Punch said their distribution vans were either stopped or seized in several cities across the country. As the clampdown continued through 10 June, the Director...

Nigerian authorities should stop harassing the independent newspaper the Daily Trust and allow its journalists to cover the news freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Soldiers on Thursday stormed the offices of the Daily Trust in the northeastern city of Maiduguri after a story published by the paper on Wednesday alleged that Nigerian soldiers had refused orders to fight Boko...

Nigerian authorities should drop the charges against a publisher who has been held in police custody since Tuesday on accusations of defaming a state governor, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday. Police on Tuesday detained Oga Tom Uhia, publisher of the monthly independent Power Steering magazine, Alexander Oketa, his lawyer, told CPJ. Uhia was charged in a lower court on Wednesday...

The Committee to Protect Journalists is holding Nigerian authorities responsible for the safety of an editor who was seized by armed men on Tuesday and has not been seen since. Thomas Thomas, editor of the thrice-weekly Global Concord newspaper, was seized by three men in plainclothes in Uyo, the capital of the oil-rich state of Akwa Ibom, according to news reports. The journalist was handcuffed...

The Nigerian National Committee of the International Press Institute (IPI) has viewed with grave concern the persistent assault on the media by the Nigerian government. The Committee condemned in particular the ongoing ambushing and impounding of newspaper delivery vans and the seizure and destruction of newspapers by the military under the dubious guise of protecting national security. The...

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has vigorously condemned the seizure of at least four prominent newspapers in Nigeria. According to IFJ affiliate, the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), on Friday, 6 June, Nigerian military seized a number of newspapers including Nation, Leadership, Daily Trust and Punch. A Defence spokesman, Chris Olukolade, has been quoted by independent...

Unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle shot Callistus Ewelike at close range in front of his house in Nyanya, Abuja, at night on January 13, 2014, news reports said. The journalist's neighbours rushed him to a local hospital, where he underwent surgery for injuries to his neck, the reports said. The assailants did not take any of Ewelike's personal items. Ewelike, a photojournalist with the state-run...

US-Nigerian professor and journalist Okey Ndibe was on January 8 questioned for several hours by the internal intelligence agency, the State Security Service (SSS), after arriving at Muritala Muhammed international airport in Lagos, Paris-based press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. Both his American and Nigerian passports were confiscated without any explanation and...

Nigerian gunmen who abducted four journalists in the country's oil-rich south a week ago released the group Sunday from an ordeal that one of them described later as "traumatic". The captors dumped the four unhurt in a forest in a remote area of Abia State, a government official said, as police and a journalists' union said no ransom was paid. "They dragged us about in the bush and blindfolded us...

Gunmen abducted three prominent Nigerian journalists and a driver traveling through the country's oil-rich, but volatile southern delta, a colleague said Monday, the latest troubling sign of insecurity in the West African nation, according to Associated Press (AP). The reporters had just left a conference in Akwa Ibom state Sunday afternoon and were forced to stop their bus by a speeding car...