(Free Expression Ghana/IFEX) – According to Free Expression Ghana, two Nigerian journalists, Bunmi Aborisade and Lewis Asubiojo, were picked up on 27 May 1998, by the Ghanaian Immigration Authorities, while another journalist, Diallo Teh, suspected to be of Guinean or Senegalese origin, was being sought. According to information made available to Free Expression Ghana, two […]
(Free Expression Ghana/IFEX) – According to Free Expression Ghana, two
Nigerian journalists, Bunmi Aborisade and Lewis Asubiojo, were picked up on
27 May 1998, by the Ghanaian Immigration Authorities, while another
journalist, Diallo Teh, suspected to be of Guinean or Senegalese origin, was
being sought.
According to information made available to Free Expression Ghana, two
officials with Ghana’s Immigration Department went to the offices of “The
Independent” newspaper and asked first for Lewis Asubiojo and then Bunmi
Aborisade, both Nigerian journalists working in Ghana. The two officials,
after having made their identities known to Bunmi, demanded to see his
passport, which he did not have. They then asked Bunmi to accompany them to
the offices of the Immigration Department. Lewis Asubiojo, the other
Nigerian, was picked up soon after and both journalists were taken to the
Immigration offices in Accra (the capital city).
At the Immigration Department, the journalists were initially threatened
with deportation back to their country of origin, Nigeria, which is in
breach of international conventions on refugees and asylum seekers. The
reason for their arrest, they were told, was working without a permit and
contrary to the laws governing asylum seekers and refugees under the United
Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR).
In spite of the official charges against the journalists, it was also
obvious that their critical write-ups against the Abacha regime in Nigeria
were causing a lot of embarrassment to the Ghanaian authorities and played a
major part in their arrest, according to Free Expression Ghana. This
assertion is buttressed by the recent statement made by the Minister of
Foreign Affairs on Ghana’s policy towards the Abacha Regime: that Ghana
cannot do without Nigeria’s oil. The arrests by the Ghanaian Authorities of
these journalists appear to be an attempt to muzzle their very critical
articles on Nigeria.
At one point in the course of their interrogation by authorities, they were
asked about another journalist, Diallo Teh, who is suspected to be a refugee
of probable Guinean or Senegalese origin.
The two journalists were then asked to each post a bail bond of 1.5 million
Cedis with surety, otherwise they would be detained. They were also to put a
stop to their high profile activism in the affairs of Nigeria while in
Ghana. Mr. Kabral Blay-Amihere, President of the West African Journalists
Association and publisher of “The Independent”, stood surety for the two
journalists.
