On May 1, Daniel Ojukwu, a journalist working with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, was busy minding his business when he sudde...
On May 1, Daniel Ojukwu, a journalist working with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, was busy minding his business when he suddenly went missing. For 24 hours, no one knew where he was, prompting his family to lodge a missing person report with the police. It turned out that the police had taken him, Gestapo-style. This abduction-style arrest was connected to a November 2023 report he had published, alleging that Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, a former senior special assistant to the Nigerian president on sustainable development goals, had, in Nigerian parlance, 'kolobied' over $106,000 of government funds intended for school construction into a restaurant's bank account. The basis for the arrest was the dubious Cyber Crime Act.
For another week, Mr Ojukwu was held in detention, having been transferred from Lagos to Abuja, and only after widespread protests was he released without being charged in court.
We are 26 years post-autocracy in Nigeria, since the military packed its bags and officially exited the political stage. Officially. But practices like the arbitrary arrest and detention of journalists, military raids on media houses, and acts of disappearing critics have continued, this time not under the draconian Decree No. 4 of 1984 and the plethora of decrees enacted by previous regimes to repress free speech, but under the 2015 Cybercrimes Act (as amended in 2023).
SPONSOR AD
The Cybercrimes Act provides a unified legal, regulatory, and institutional framework for prohibiting, preventing, detecting, prosecuting, and punishing cybercrimes in Nigeria. Its stated main objectives include protecting critical national information infrastructure, promoting cybersecurity, and safeguarding computer systems, networks, electronic communications, data, intellectual property, and privacy rights.
Recently, Human Rights Watch released its 2025 report on Nigeria, and sadly, it makes for grim reading regarding press freedom in the country. Within the period under review, several journalists and private citizens have been essentially abducted by security operatives for a variety of reasons stemming from nebulous interpretations of the Cyber Security Act.
Interpretations of Section 24(1)(b), which criminalises sending messages using computer systems that are 'knowingly false' or intended to incite a breakdown of law and order or threaten life, and Section 27, which relates to conspiracy, attempts to commit cyber offences, and aiding and abetting offences like fraud using computer systems, contain vague language that enables authorities to target journalists whose investigative or critical reports are deemed to cause public unrest or defame powerful individuals, as was the case with journalists charged for reporting on alleged bank fraud.
Journalists like Mr Ojukwu have been charged under this section for reporting on alleged corruption and financial crimes, especially when their reporting implicates influential persons or institutions. Even private citizens like Chioma Okoli found herself in a hot pot of stew when she was charged with offences under the Cybercrimes Act after posting a negative review of a tomato purée produced by Erisco Foods Limited, which petitioned the police.
In March, a dozen armed soldiers, as if they were after a bandit kingpin or Boko Haram commander, stormed the residence of Segun Olatunji, the editor of First News site. They took him from Lagos to Abuja, where he was questioned for two weeks about criticisms and allegations of corruption against government officials in his publications.
Journalists, social media users, and public commenters-no one is safe from the broad interpretations of the Cybercrimes Act, which seem to make a wide range of online interactions a criminal offence.
After years of colonial rule and repressive military regimes, media repression has become so ingrained that even a democratically elected government has leveraged legislation passed by elected officials to constrain the media and curtail free expression.
This issue has a long history in Nigeria, where authorities have always found ways to restrict free expression. The colonial administration used the Newspaper Ordinance of 1903 and the Sedition Ordinance of 1909 to silence critiques of the colonial state. This repression intensified during WWII when press censorship was enacted under the Defence Regulations of 1939, which gave colonial authorities broad powers to suppress publications considered harmful to the war effort or public order. Newspapers had to submit materials for pre-publication censorship, with designated censors appointed for different regions, effectively limiting critical reporting.
By 1941, measures such as banning the importation of newsprint were enacted to slow down or suppress newspapers not under colonial control.
These laws, alongside subsequent regulations, entrenched a pattern of limiting press freedom focused on protecting colonial authority from nationalist criticism and agitation. They did not die with the end of colonialism, as military regimes continued the tradition with military decrees, and now we are seeing that manifest through legislative acts.
In reality, we have never truly decolonised our media laws and have instead continued to find ways to legitimise media repression through various reinterpretations, all for the benefit of those in power.
The Cybercrimes Act technically should not provide grounds for the dubious arrest or state abduction and detention of journalists and critics without trial, but it has. This is because those who made the laws intended for them to serve that purpose and inserted vague wording that allows for these questionable applications.
The Human Rights Watch report paints a grim picture of the reality for journalists and critics in Nigeria and for free expression as a whole. Unless the Cybercrimes Act is amended to categorically stop targeting journalists, press freedom will continue to suffer in a country with such a vibrant press that has been at the forefront of both the fight for independence and the return to democracy.
For the service the press has rendered the country, for being at the forefront of every fight, if a medal is not pinned on their lapels, they should not have shackles clamped to their legs. The Cybercrimes Act simply must be reviewed to stop being deployed against journalists trying to play their vital role in strengthening our democracy by fulfilling their watchdog functions. That is the very least our democracy should guarantee its frontline warriors-the press.
Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).
COMMENTS