(CCPJ/IFEX) – Tomorrow, June 12, has been designated an International Day of Action on Nigeria. The Canadian Committee to Protect Journalists (CCPJ) joins with its colleagues in Nigeria, other members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) and the Working Group on Nigeria in Canada to call for the release of all political prisoners, […]
(CCPJ/IFEX) – Tomorrow, June 12, has been designated an International Day of
Action on Nigeria. The Canadian Committee to Protect Journalists (CCPJ)
joins with its colleagues in Nigeria, other members of the International
Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) and the Working Group on Nigeria in
Canada to call for the release of all political prisoners, including
journalists, and for a true transition to democracy to take place.
June 12 is a day when Nigerians at home and abroad commemorate the failed
democratic elections of 1993 when publisher Moshood Abiola was elected
president. After General Sani Abacha came to power in a coup annulling those
elections, Chief Abiola was jailed the following June. He remains in jail,
suffering under terrible conditions with hundreds of other political
prisoners, including more than a dozen journalists jailed for exercising
their right to freedom of expression. With the death of Abacha on 8 June,
CCPJ hopes there is a new opportunity for freedom of expression to thrive in
Nigeria.
The CCPJ is calling on Nigeria’s new Head of State, General Abdulsalam
Abubakar, to release all political prisoners being held in detention, most
without charge. They include Babafemi Ojudu, managing editor of “Tempo” and
“TheNews”, who was awarded the CCPJ International Press Freedom Award along
with his colleague Bayo Onanuga. Onanuga fled the country after death
threats, while Ojudu remains in detention without charge where he has been
since last year.
Among the other journalists in detention are four journalists jailed in 1995
for reporting on an alleged coup plot. They are Christine Anyanwu, Ben
Charles Obi, George Mbah and Kunle Ajibade. Anyanwu was honoured this year
with the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Award for her efforts to
promote press freedom in Nigeria at great personal risk. A fifth journalist,
Niran Malaolu, was jailed in December for reporting on another alleged coup
plot and sentenced to 25 years in prison earlier this spring.
The CCPJ continues to appeal to the Canadian government to keep up the
pressure on Nigeria and to use its role in the Commonwealth to seek
appropriate sanctions including the expulsion of Nigeria from that body if
the transition to democracy does not take place.
We further appeal to Canadian oil companies to stop doing business with
Nigeria, where billions of dollars of oil revenue goes into the pockets of
the military rulers while the people of Nigeria suffer. Canadian Occidental
recently announced its intention to pursue oil production in Nigeria despite
being advised of human rights violations in oil producing areas, a fact of
which Shell Canada has long been aware. We continue to appeal to Shell
Canada, which says it does not import Nigerian oil, to pressure Shell
International to reconsider its operations in Nigeria, including the Ogoni
region.
We remind them that writer and Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed after
a trial in 1995 which fell far short of international standards, and which
many believe was used by the authorities to silence his protests over the
devastation wrought by Shell in Ogoni.
