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Nigeria’s Whitewashed Heads of State — The Kano Emperors (4): Abacha’s End
By: Akinyemi, Muhammed Adedeji
Press Freedom and Repression Under Abacha
A dictator and free press are like oil and water, they do not mix well. Within two months of seizing power in November 1993, General Sani Abacha’s military government began a series of attacks on the media aimed at bending it to its will (1). The government has been provoked above all by the activities of a vibrant independent press which has been prominent in calling for an immediate and unconditional return to civilian rule (2). In furtherance of this, Abacha considered the creation of a press court. The special “press court” would try journalists accused of making “false reports” (3). The regime would subjectively determine what a false report was, and punish journalists accordingly.
From November 1993, dozens of journalists working for the independent press have been arbitrarily arrested and detained incommunicado without charge or trial for prolonged periods (4). Hundreds more have been arrested and briefly detained, sometimes repeatedly, by security agents of the government — either as a warning to them not to pursue sensitive or controversial stories or as punishment for stories already published (5). Journalists were detained under Decree 2, which precluded detainees from going to any court, and made them incommunicado.
When it was difficult to arrest a journalist, the regime would detain people close to them. In 1993, security agents arrested and briefly detained Ladi Olorunyomi, wife of Dapo Olorunyomi, and their three-month-old baby, Aramide, when the security men could not find him at home (6). She was arrested again in March 1997 and only released after 48 days in detention (7). In some cases, journalists went missing without a trace. Baguda Kaltho, a senior correspondent for The News magazine, who was based in Kaduna, “disappeared” in March 1996 (8). Before his “disappearance”, Kaltho was being sought by security agents from the Directorate of Military Intelligence about stories he had written about the alleged March 1995 coup plot over which…
