(MISA/IFEX) – The following is a joint MISA-MFWA alert: On 23 June 2003, State Security Service (SSS) officials in Abeokuta, Ogun State, south-west Nigeria, purchased all available print runs of the week’s edition of “Tell” magazine. The move was an apparent attempt by government officials to prevent circulation of the magazine’s issue with the banner […]
(MISA/IFEX) – The following is a joint MISA-MFWA alert:
On 23 June 2003, State Security Service (SSS) officials in Abeokuta, Ogun State, south-west Nigeria, purchased all available print runs of the week’s edition of “Tell” magazine. The move was an apparent attempt by government officials to prevent circulation of the magazine’s issue with the banner headline, “Scandal in Aso Rock”.
The 20 June edition of “Tell” carried in its lead story a report that was considered invidious of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government.
According to the MFWA’s Nigeria sources, three plain-clothes security men went to Ijeoma, the newspaper distribution centre in Abeokuta, as early as 7:00 a.m. (local time) and purchased 120 copies from the magazine’s two agents. On 21 June, officials of COJA (the Organising Committee of the All Africa Games, Abuja 2003) in Lagos and other parts of the country tried to prevent the magazine from reaching the newsstands by buying it off the vendors.
A 24 June press statement by Ayodele Akinkuotu, the magazine’s editor, also alleged that prior to this operation, COJA officials visited the magazine’s headquarters in Ogba, Lagos, on 20 June and “made overtures to the magazine’s management to buy the whole edition.”
The MFWA is appalled by the state officials’ evident intolerance of a critical press. The incident occurred as the sub-region is still celebrating the relative gains made for democracy in Nigeria by the swearing in on 29 May of Obasanjo as president for a renewed four-year mandate. The attempt to prevent circulation of “Tell” amounts to censorship, which undermines the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression rights of the general public and media in Nigeria. It is also contrary to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stipulates the right to hold and share opinion and information without let or hindrance.