The Intelligence Response Team of the Inspector-General of Police, Olukayode Egbetokun, has reportedly moved Daniel Ojukwu, a journalist with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, to the National Cybercrime Centre, in Abuja.
This information was shared with our journalist through a phone call on Sunday by the organization’s founder, ‘Fisayo Soyombo.
Ojukwu disappeared on Wednesday, May 1, and his phone was turned off, making it impossible to know where he was.
Even though the FIJ tried to report him missing at police stations in the area where he was last seen, they couldn't find out where he was.
In an attempt to find out where he was, the foundation hired a detective who tracked the last place Ojukwu's phones were active to a location in Isheri Olofin, which is believed to be where the police took him.
Afterwards, Ojukwu’s family found out that he was being detained at the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, Lagos State, where he was accused of breaking the 2015 Cybercrime Act.
Soyombo said he would not call Ojukwu’s difficult experience an arrest, but an 'abduction.'
He said, “We keep doing everything we can do behind the scenes,” adding that the abduction is “annoying.”
When asked if the location of the “abducted” journalist has been known, Soyombo admitted that the IRT had moved Ojukwu to the National Cybercrime Centre in Abuja on Sunday (today).
Ojukwu, who was allowed to speak to his employer for the first time since his detention told the FIJ on Sunday, “I’m currently in Abuja; I am at the NPF-NCCC – that’s the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre.
“I arrived this morning, and I was taken into a cell. All I know is that I’m in Abuja. This is the first time I’ve been given my phone since Wednesday. They (NPF-NCC agents) said that they were going to ask me questions. So, I’m waiting.”
Ojukwu’s “abduction” came at a time Nigerian journalists, on Thursday, joined their counterparts across the globe to mark the World Press Freedom Day.
FIJ noted that on this same day last year, World Press Freedom Day 2023, men of the Area F Police in Lagos arrested Ojukwu for telling them to stop punching a driver.
According to the FIJ, when the NPF-NCC grilled the chairman of FIJ’s Board of Trustees, Bukky Shonibare, at their Abuja office in March, they had mentioned FIJ’s story on how Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, the then Senior Special Assistant on Sustainable Development Goals (SSAP-SDGs) to the President, paid N147.1 million to an account traced to Enseno Global Ventures (Enseno GV), an Abuja-based restaurant, for — guess what — the construction of a classroom!
Seven days later, the Force Police Public Relations Officer, Ademuyiwa Adejobi, told ‘Politics Today,’ a Channels TV programme anchored by Seun Okinbaloye, that there were “two or three weighty allegations” against FIJ and its founder ‘Fisayo Soyombo.
