(MRA/IFEX) – On 10 February 2005, agents of the State Security Service (SSS), Nigeria’s intelligence agency, raided newsstands on Old Market Road, the main distribution centre for the city of Onitsha, in Anambra State. The SSS agents confiscated large quantities of “The News”, “The Source” and “The Week” magazines, as well as copies of “Hallmark” […]
(MRA/IFEX) – On 10 February 2005, agents of the State Security Service (SSS), Nigeria’s intelligence agency, raided newsstands on Old Market Road, the main distribution centre for the city of Onitsha, in Anambra State. The SSS agents confiscated large quantities of “The News”, “The Source” and “The Week” magazines, as well as copies of “Hallmark” newspaper. They also arrested a newspaper distributor, Ikechukwu Obisi, and took him to an unknown location. The SSS officials, who were from Awka, the state capital, took the action on the grounds that the news vendors were distributing publications carrying stories about the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB).
The security agents’ actions led to a demonstration by members of the Newspaper Distributors and Agents Association, who took to the streets in Onitsha to protest the confiscation of the magazines and newspapers and the arrest of their member. The newspaper vendors refused to distribute newspapers in protest over the “incessant arrest, intimidation and extortion of their members by men of the State Security Service (SSS) in Anambra State.”
They carried placards with various inscriptions, including: “SSS, allow us to carry out our legitimate business”, “SSS, we are not publishers of newspapers and magazines, we sell, so leave us alone”, “SSS, stop intimidation, arrest and extortion of our members,” and “when did selling of newspapers and magazines become an offence in Nigeria?”
A lawyer for the newspaper distributors, Obele Chuka Obele, has also petitioned the SSS director in Awka in protest over the security agents’ actions. In the petition, Obele said, “It was painful that, apart from constituting an utter gross violation of the right of the distributors, an arm of the National Security Agencies, which has no power under the National Security Agencies Act, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004 to detain Mr. Obisi or seize his properties, has suddenly acquired the toga of its predecessor, the notorious and dreaded National Security Organisation, NSO”. He added that, “We do not want to believe that our land is about to witness a resurgence of the Abacha-era security service activities, when law abiding citizens were harassed and hounded into unlawful custody.”
