On Sunday, June 21, some security operatives swooped on one of the famous online journalists at a location in Ikeja. Unaware of what his offence was, he was immediately stripped of his phones and left incommunicado for so long.
Soon, words started going round that the journalist had been picked up on the order of one of the 36 governors of the federation for allegedly saturating the airwaves ‎with unfavourable reports about him.
Efforts to reach the journalist and importantly, get him out failed. The habitual dictator now governor was believed to have left a standing instruction on what to do and except it was done, they would not let him off, although not unmindful of the constitutional 24 hours‎ detention period.
The security operatives did not hide the fact that they were out to extract information from the journalist whom the governor and the snitch around him believed had been paid to undermine him.
First, they wanted to start by profiling those calling on the journalist’s behalf to ascertain who might be behind the governor’s ordeal. Apparently none of the calls met their expectation because there is already a mindset.
Immediately after, they directed pointed questions at the journalist, asking if a certain former governor was his sponsor and wanted to know how much he was handed to do “the hatchet job” as it seemed to them.
The ELITES gathered that the sitting governor had made the security operatives to believe that one of his predecessors was responsible for the media attacks and had wanted to use this particular journalist as a scapegoat to stifle the others from doing their job.
A smart guy that the journalist is, when allegedly confronted with some of t‎he stories by the security operatives in a long printout, he saw the thread of the mail addresses and could identify, at least, a colleague who might have forwarded the stories from his personal mail addy.
Sadly, ‎for this governor, he is surrounded by veteran journalists – supposedly so – including one holding a very critical office and before their very eyes, they not only saw this happen to one of them but acquiesced to it.
There is no telling that such a governor would not do well in office because it is either that he has been caged already by sycophants and no-do-wells or that he is his own problem. The very foundation of a situation as disappointing as this is that such elements come across as lacking rudimentary sense of history and evidently bad managers of man and resources, notwithstanding their grandstanding and volte face.
Of course, the governor denied when he was allegedly contacted by people both home and away but the security operatives could not but expose the identity of the man behind the journalist’s ordeal,‎ albeit inadvertently. The journalist was eventually released in the evening of the following day, Monday, June 22.
Let it be said and perhaps, for the umpteenth time that no one can‎ cow the media, regardless of his standing in the society. To think that such ingrates are products of the media’s cracking nature and huge beneficiaries of whatever they call its disposition now, makes them a disappointment to either progressivism or conservatism – whichever is their political leaning.
This very harassment will not change anything though. It’s rather a bad one for the governor. The truth remains what it is, truth and no amount of executive recklessness or highhandednes will stifle the media from carrying out their responsibilities.
It is also a welcome development that concerned citizens of Nigeria are aware of the development and have vowed to take it up. Indeed, communications have since been going round. What a way for a fresher governor to start his profiling! But let’s see how far this monstrous regime can go in this venture. All eyes on him and his deceptive smile.