(MRA/IFEX) – On 25 July 2005, Ezuiche Ubani, “Thisday” newspaper’s editor-at-large, was prevented from travelling to Ghana by agents of the State Security Service (SSS), Nigeria’s intelligence service. Ubani arrived at Abuja’s Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport at about 4.00 p.m. (local time) and proceeded to go through routine immigration clearance. When he submitted his passport […]
(MRA/IFEX) – On 25 July 2005, Ezuiche Ubani, “Thisday” newspaper’s editor-at-large, was prevented from travelling to Ghana by agents of the State Security Service (SSS), Nigeria’s intelligence service.
Ubani arrived at Abuja’s Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport at about 4.00 p.m. (local time) and proceeded to go through routine immigration clearance. When he submitted his passport for stamping, rather than check, stamp and return it, the SSS official at the immigration post seized the passport and sent Ubani to the airport’s SSS office for questioning.
According to the editor, the SSS officials asked him when he last travelled out of the country and which airport he travelled through. Even after verifying that he travelled to Ghana in March this year, via Lagos’ Murtala Mohammed Airport, the security agents refused to allow him to make the journey. He said the security operatives refused to tell him what offence he had committed to warrant his being prevented from travelling outside the country, despite his insistence on being told.
The SSS men reportedly said there was an order issued earlier by the agency directing that he be prevented from travelling, although Ubani said he was never informed of the order. The agents also refused to tell him the reason for the order or who issued the travel ban. They simply insisted that they “did not give the order.”
Ubani was kept at the SSS office within the airport premises for more than two hours and was told that a superior officer was on the way from the agency’s headquarters to ask him further questions. But the officer never showed up. After Ubani’s flight departed, the operatives at the airport returned his passport and told him that the officer who was supposed to question him at the airport had called the SSS director-general, who instructed that he be allowed to leave.
