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● Says family member of Attorney General of Federation should not be oppressing the poor
A leading pro-democracy group, Kwara Must Change, has expressed outrage at the continuous detention of some journalists by the police through the order of Ms Jumoke Gafar, an alleged family member of the Attorney General of the Federation.
Kwara Must Change noted that the continuous detention of members of the press for doing their job amounted to an outright abuse of power, not only by the police, but also by Ms Jumoke, and even by the judiciary, which ordered the remand of the journalists without due justification.
While reacting to news of the journalists’ detention, a member of Kwara Must Change, who is also an anchor of the groups popular radio programme, “Eto Wa”, Mr Lanre Babadudu maintained that, it was illegal and unlawful to detain journalists simply for publishing a press statement with adequate credit to the source and appropriate balance of story.
According to Babadudu, the only job of the press was to publish stories, adding that publishing a story with known sources should never be a locus for detention.
Babadudu explained that, there was no way the police and judge would justify their remand of journalists who simply provided platform to air a view, while those who originally owned the views were walking free.
According to him: “It just doesn’t make sense.”
He noted that the leadership of Kwara Must Change had explored alternative means of assisting the parties to resolve the issue for the past 8 days, but “Jumoke Gafar, who is the architect of this oppression seems to be enjoying herself abroad.”
“Let it be clear that Jumoke Gafar is the oppressor, not the victim. She’s the unjust fellow using her privileged access to unjustly oppress journalists. ”
Babadudu also noted that the death of online personality, Mubarak Yusuf, popularly known as Authority, was not unconnected to this issue, because Mubarak was killed by cultists while visiting the detained journalists in police detention.
He called on the Attorney General of the Federation to call his family member to order and the state authorities to release the journalists without delay.
Recall that two journalists, Abdulrazaq Aiyelabegan, CEO of Just Event Online and Lukman, CEO of Satcomm Media have been held in illegal detention for the past eight days.
