(CPJ/IFEX) – During the evening of 6 February 1999, police raided the Satellite Press in Ogba, Lagos, owned by former government minister and presidential aspirant Jim Nwobodo. They arrested Kingsley Uwannah, the company’s chief accountant; Kayode Sofuyi, a production assistant for “The News” magazine; and the publisher of “Prime Sunset,” a Lagos-based afternoon newspaper. Sofuyi […]
(CPJ/IFEX) – During the evening of 6 February 1999, police raided the
Satellite Press in Ogba, Lagos, owned by former government minister and
presidential aspirant Jim Nwobodo. They arrested Kingsley Uwannah, the
company’s chief accountant; Kayode Sofuyi, a production assistant for
“The News” magazine; and the publisher of “Prime Sunset,” a Lagos-based
afternoon newspaper. Sofuyi was released later that weekend.
The police, who said they were acting on the orders of Alhaji Ali Jos,
the assistant inspector general of Zone 2, seized 80,000 copies of the
upcoming week’s issue of “The News” magazine that were being stitched
for immediate circulation in Western and Eastern Nigeria. They closed
down the company’s operations. As of 7 February, the police were still
preventing workers and customers from entering the press to conduct
business.
The confiscated edition of “The News” carried the cover line: “Abacha’s
Co-Looters, Aluko Reveals All.” It was not clear whether this seizure
was in fact carried out under Jos’ instructions, or initiated by the
police themselves.
Witnesses reported that the policemen were led by an officer identified
as “Akpan” who had gone to the press earlier that afternoon in search of
the plates and films of printed matter by a “suspect”, who had no
connection to “The News”, who they had brought to the premises in
handcuffs. They left after they arrested an unnamed lithographer at the
press.
