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B N W: Biafra Nigeria World News |
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NLC, TMG, CNPP, Rep deplore SSS raid on magazine
CRITICISM is still trailing the recent raid of the offices of the Insider Weekly magazine. The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), the Transition Monitoring Group (IMG), member of House of Representatives, Abike Dabiri, and Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP) described the raid as a threat to the country's democracy and rule of law.
They also criticised in strong terms, the holding in hostage of the wife and children of one of the editors, Mr. Isaac Ummuna, to compel him to give himself up to the State Security Services (SSS).
In a two-page protest letter, Labour said that the vandalisation of the media house and the carting away of its computers, cash and entire publication of the week, in addition to holding the staff hostage, was a frightening throw back to the Abacha days.
"The SSS excuses for these patently illegal and unconstitutional acts are that the magazine's stories cast President Olusegun Obasanjo and top politicians in bad light and that its seized edition with the story, Why Obasanjo wants to kill the NLC, is not fit for public consumption. To us, these are not enough reasons for government and its agents should take the law into their hands rather than resort to the law courts. The constitution has not made the pleasure or convenience of the state and its operators the condition for the citizens to exercise the rights to impart or receive information," they said.
Labour, quoting Section 39 of the Nigerian constitution, stated that the magazine operated within the provisions of the law and should be taken to court if in the process of its reporting it defamed any person or institution.
"So it is unacceptable for government to be the complainant, prosecutor and judge. It is injurious to our country that rather than hunt criminals who have made the country unsafe, government and its security agencies are hunting journalists who are carrying out their professional duties," Labour said.
NLC recalled how similar act affected them last July when government used the same SSS to clamp down on Labour officials and detained two of them for distributing copies of the reaction of the congress to the Anti-Labour Bill and their alert that the intimidation is not only against them but to all organisations regarded as opposition.
"Now it has spread to the media and we have no doubt that with the increasing intolerance of government, more institutions in the country will fall victim," it warned.
NLC, affirming its solidarity with the magazine in the statement signed by its Head of Information, Owei Lakemfa, reminded President Obasanjo that he is the chairman of the African Union and therefore should hasten action to call off the unnecessary repressive tendencies.
They also demanded among other things the immediate reopening of the magazine, release of its staff in detention, seizure of hunt for the editors, returning of the seized copies of the magazine and payment of adequate compensation to the medium for the loss incurred as a result of the raid.
"It is also part of a wider programme aimed at imposing, without dissent, an authoritarian economic and political agenda on the Nigerian nation. Only faith and fidelity to the rule of law and due process can sustain the Nigerian democratic project. A deliberate sabotage of the process and intimidation of its workers in the name of State Security will set the agenda of national rebirth back by so many decades," TMG said.
It urged legal action against the magazine by any aggrieved individual or organisation instead of using the SSS meant for the welfare of the state to pursue selfish agenda and protection of political empires.
"Our democracy can only grow and have meaning when we learn to respect its critical institutions. The press cannot discharge its function of holding government accountable when security agents storm such institutions at will. The press can act as a bulwark against dictatorship and open societies when they are given a free hand to function," TMG added.
Dabiri, who is chairman of the House of Representatives Media and Public Affairs Committee, deplored the raid, saying it was a bad development in press-government relationship.
In a statement in Lagos, she described it as an attempt to muscle the mass media, thereby preventing them from carrying out their constitutional role.
She stated that the Federal Government ought to have lodged formal complaints with the Nigerian Press Council (NPC), the organ responsible for the regulation of media activities, instead of taking the law into its own hands.
For the CNPP, the raid portends ominous signs for the country's fledgling civil rule.
Describing the action as unconstitutional, Chief Maxi Okwu, the CNPP secretary general said in a statement that the dark days of military high-handedness might have returned. He called for the dismantling of the SSS because it has no role to play in a democratic setting.
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