Non-Governmental Organization, the Media Rights Agenda (MRA) has called on the acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, to put an end to the growing trend of public officials and other powerful individuals using the Police to silence and punish journalists who publish negative reports about them, saying the law enforcement agency has become a tool in the hands of such people to shield themselves from scrutiny.
The group in a statement by its Deputy Executive Director, Ayode Longe, noted that section 22 of the 1999 Constitution imposes a duty on the media and also gives it the freedom to uphold the responsibility and accountability of the government to the people.
Longe said the function is certainly not for the police to prevent the media from performing this duty or exercising this freedom. He said the recurrent pattern of the police being used to impede the media’s performance of a constitutionally mandated function constitutes an egregious abuse of police powers.
He said, “It is even more obscene that this abuse of the powers of the Police is sometimes done in the name of the IGP’s Monitoring Unit of the Nigeria Police, thereby bringing the highest office in the Nigerian Police into disrepute.
“The latest manifestation of this abuse of Police powers, the IGP’s Monitoring Unit in Abuja, in a letter signed by DCP A. A. Elleman, Head of the Unit, invited three journalists – Mr Petrus Obi of Everyday NewsNgr, Mr Ignatius Okpara of the African Examiner, and Mr Clinton Umeh of Journalists 101, who are all based in Enugu, to report in Abuja today, Monday, August 14, 2023, to answer to allegations of criminal conspiracy, cyberstalking, injurious falsehood, conduct likely to cause a breach of public peace and criminal defamation with intent to incite levelled against them by Dr Monday Nwite Igwe, the Medical Director of the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Enugu.
“The invitation followed news stories and articles published by the journalists about happenings at the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Enugu, including the closure of the hospital’s School of Post Basic Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing in Enugu, both of which Dr Igwe exercised supervision over.”
Longe argued that it is hard to understand how reports published by journalists in Enugu about a public institution based in Enugu have become a matter over which the journalists are being summoned to Abuja and is a priority for the IGP’s Monitoring Unit in a country plagued by thousands of violent and other serious crimes.
He added that by devoting their energies and resources to chasing after journalists carrying out their constitutional functions, the Police are misusing resources that ought to be used to fight the real criminals, including terrorists, bandits, kidnappers, hired assassins, armed robbers, murderers, human traffickers, rapists, and other violent criminal and diverting such resources to aid personal vendettas.
