Four journalists who covered the recent dismissal of the electoral commission chairman received anonymous death threats via text message on Wednesday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and news reports. The messages, sent from the same number, said the reporters would meet the fate of three slain Nigerian journalists. “We will deal with you soon. Remember Dele Giwa, Bayo Ohu...
Three Nigerian journalists were killed in two separate incidents over the weekend. Muslim rioters killed two reporters working with a local Christian newspaper on Saturday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Also on Saturday, court reporter Edo Sule Ugbagwu, from the private daily The Nation was shot dead at his home by two gunmen, according to local journalists. "Reporting...
An angry crowd of mourners attending a mass funeral in Dogo Nahawa, central Nigeria, assaulted state radio reporter Murtala Sani on Monday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Sani, a reporter for the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, was assigned to cover the funeral of more than 40 people killed during a bloody March 7 attack on four villages in central Nigeria. Sani and...
Two sports journalists, one South African and one Nigerian, were seized by unidentified gunmen in military uniforms in Nigeria on Monday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The gunmen stopped a bus carrying 21 crew members of M-Net’s SuperSport channel, a South African private satellite television station, and took the three journalists hostage, local journalists told New...
Mallam Tukur, the editor-in-chief and publisher of the independent weekly, Desert Herald, based in Kaduna State of Nigeria has been arrested for defamation, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Two plainclothes police arrested Tukur on defamation charges at his office in Kaduna on February 8 and took him to a police station in Bauchi State. He was released on bail the following...
The assistant news editor of Nigerian daily Guardian, Bayo Ohu, was shot dead at home by a group of up to five gunmen on Sunday morning as he was preparing to go to a church service. The killers fired at least eight bullets into him, after he opened the door to them, the International Press Institute (IPI) has reported quoting news reports.. The journalist’s wife had already left the house to...
The investigation into the murder of Paul Abayomi Ogundeji, journalist on the privately-owned daily Thisday, and member of its editorial committee, has been handed to the judicial police, regional authorities in Lagos State said on January 20, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The journalist was shot dead in the Dopemu district of the capital Lagos on August 17, 2008 as he was...
Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has voiced its concern after armed men burst into the apartment block of Janet Mba, editor of the magazine The Scroll in Arepo in Ogun State in south-western Nigeria. She escaped attack because she managed to call the police before they could strike. The worldwide press freedom organisation recorded at least 10 cases of physical assaults and eight cases of threats...
Nigeria President Umaru Yar’Adua has initiated action against independent daily Leadership after it carried an article on the state of health of Yar’Adua saying he had to cancel official engagements for two days because of ill health. The article also said that doctors had been flown in from Saudi Arabia to treat him, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) has reported. The publisher of Leadership, Sam...
Emmanuel Emeka Asiwe, editor of the Huhuonline ( http://huhuonline.com) website, has been released after a week of interrogation by Nigeria's State Security Service, the domestic intelligence agency, but deplores its refusal to let him to go back to the United States, where he lives. “Irked by websites with political or satirical content, the Nigerian authorities are trying to force online...
