In what looked like a sting operation, a team of policemen have arrested a professional webmaster, Mr. Adebowale Adekoya over an investigative news story published last year in NewsDigest, an Abuja-based online medium which he provides technical services for.
Adekoya, PRNigeria learnt, was arrested in Ikorodu, Lagos last Friday while going home and thereafter whisked away to Ilorin Kwara State without meeting his family.
The investigative news report, which was titled: “Inside Kwara factory where Indian hemp smoking is ‘legalized,” was authored by Mr. Alfred Olufemi, an award-winning campus journalist from one of the premier universities in the country. The story was published by NewsDigest with the reporter’s byline on 19 May, 2018.
The report showed that workers at Hillcrest Agro-Alied Industry, one of the group of companies owned by a former Deputy Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mrs. Sarah Alade, were smoking cigarettes within its vicinity.
Before the story was published, the company refused to respond to enquiries. Calls and text messages sent to the firm’s telephone hotline were not responded to.
Over a year after the story was published, Hillcrest wrote a petition to the police alleging that the story was injurious to it.
Rather than seek clarification from the reporter or approach the publisher of NewsDigest, the police identified and arrested the person, Adekoya, who registered the website.
Confirming the arrest, the Police Public Relations Officer in Kwara State, Mr Ajayi Okasanmi, said the journalist would be taken to Abuja as part of investigations.
Okasanmi said, “The case is being investigated. It is a case of defamation of character. The character of a person was defamed. He was arrested and taken to Kwara. He will also be taken to Abuja as part of investigation.
“There is an element of criminality in the allegations. It is not just defamation alone. By Wednesday, we will have more information.”
Reacting to the arrest, Gidado Yushau, Editor of NewsDigest, expressed shock over the arrest of his online newspaper’s webmaster, describing the police’s action as an “unbridled illegality.”
The police have in the last one year arrested several journalists for alleged defamation, a move which has been criticised by Amnesty International and other rights groups.
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