Police abduct FIJ reporter, Daniel Ojukwu ‘On IGP’s Orders’

A journalist with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, Daniel Ojukwu, has been reportedly abducted by the Intelligence Response Team of the Inspector General of Police.

Ojukwu is currently being held at the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, in Lagos State, FIJ reports.

Ojukwu was said to have gone missing on Wednesday and was unreachable as his numbers were switched off and his whereabouts unknown to colleagues, family and friends.

Twenty-four hours after he went missing, FIJ made a missing person report at police stations in the area where Ojukwu was headed.

However, on Friday, a private detective hired by FIJ tracked the last active location of his phones to an address in Isheri Olofin, a location FIJ now believes was where the police originally picked him up.

According to the FIJ report, Ojukwu’s family learned of his detention at Panti and understood that authorities were accusing him of violating the 2015 Cybercrime Act.

A relative who visited him told FIJ that the authorities refused to provide contact details of the Investigating Police Officer on jurisdictional grounds as the case was beyond Lagos.

“The arresting officers are part of the IG Monitoring Team. They said when they are done arresting the other people on their watchlist in Lagos, they would transfer him and others to Abuja,” FIJ quoted the family member as saying.

The Nigeria Police Force is yet to speak on Ojukwu’s abduction.

His abduction came at a time Nigerian journalists, on Thursday, joined their counterparts across the globe to mark the World Press Freedom Day.

FIJ noted that on this same day last year, World Press Freedom Day 2023, men of the Area F Police in Lagos arrested Ojukwu for telling them to stop punching a driver.

According to the FIJ, when the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre grilled Bukky Shonibare, the chairman of FIJ’s Board of Trustees, at their Abuja office in March, they had mentioned FIJ’s story on how Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, the then Senior Special Assistant on Sustainable Development Goals (SSAP-SDGs) to the President, paid N147.1 million to an account traced to Enseno Global Ventures (Enseno GV), an Abuja-based restaurant, for — guess what — the construction of a classroom!

Seven days later, Ademuyiwa Adejobi, Police Public Relations Officer, then told ‘Politics Today’, a Channels TV programme anchored by Seun Okinbaloye, that there were “two or three weighty allegations” against FIJ and its founder ‘Fisayo Soyombo.