By Of recent, Nigerian journalists have been asked to explain themselves to the police for reports about public money. One of them is in a cell, and the other went home after a morning at a police squad office, and frankly, we do not believe the difference is a reason for comfort.
The first is Daniel Ojukwu of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ). On 10 November a federal court in Abuja remanded him at Kuje until a bail hearing on 1 December, on cybercrime and criminal defamation charges. They arise from FIJ reports published in 2023 and 2024 on contracts in the office of a former presidential aide. FIJ founder Fisayo Soyombo faces the same charges. The Cybercrimes Act sections carry up to ten years in prison or a fine of N25 million, and the Criminal Code sections carry up to two years. Ojukwu was also secretly arrested and held for ten days in 2024 over the same reporting, so he is being punished twice for one story. The lawyer for the former aide says journalists should be able to prove what they published; undoubtedly, that is a fair demand. However, a civil court is where it should be tested.
The second is Jare Ismahil Tiamiyu of Insight Links TV in Osun State. A letter dated 23 October, issued from the Zone XI command in Osogbo, invited him to the Zonal “X” Squad on 26 October. It called the invitation fact-finding and said it concerned a case under investigation. It named no complainant and no offence. Tiamiyu says he attended and that the petition came from the Osun Commissioner for Youth Affairs, Moshood Olagunju. He says it concerns his reporting on N25 million for an ICT training programme.
On the money, Afriktimes gathered that the reported dated 19 October where a document shows the Youth Affairs ministry received N25 million for a digital training that was never held. It said the commissioner confirmed receiving a records request but would respond only “when they ask me to respond”, and that follow-up messages after the August election went unanswered. We have not verified the underlying claim, and the commissioner has the right to answer it. Nothing we have seen shows that he has done so on the record.
Tiamiyu praised the officers who received him for their professionalism, and we note that. It shows the police can behave well. It also shows where the problem lies. A decent officer sitting at the end of a petition is still the end of a pipeline that starts with an official who dislikes a story.
A pattern with a postcode
This is not the first time the Zone XI command has invited a journalist in Osogbo. In September 2025, Osun Defender’s Yusuf Oketola attended a Zone XI invitation described as fact-finding. According to Media Rights Agenda, he was asked to reveal his source, detained for several hours, and his family paid N50,000 to secure his release, although an officer had reportedly asked for N500,000. In June 2026 the Osun Commissioner of Police publicly apologised for the unlawful arrest of the state NUJ secretary, Lekan Akindoju.
We have seen how that pattern runs across the country. In February, police summoned Premium Times’ Abubakar Maishanu in Kano over his reporting on a dry-port ownership dispute. In September 2025, FIJ’s Sodiq Atanda was held in Ekiti for 11 hours after a vice-chancellor petitioned police over reports about him. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) counted at least 29 journalists prosecuted under the Cybercrimes Act between 2015 and October 2024.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) placed Nigeria 112th of 180 countries this year, ten places better than in 2025 but still in the “difficult” category. A ten-place gain should not be mistaken for safety.
The same playbook, in every region
The trial of the press is not limited to Nigeria, unsurprisingly so. The charge only changes with the country. The method stays the same and it is to find a law broad enough to reach a reporter, and let the process do the punishing.
In Africa, Algeria arrested French sports journalist Christophe Gleizes in May 2024 after he interviewed a football club president in Kabylie. He was sentenced to seven years for “glorifying terrorism” and has now spent more than 500 days in prison since that sentence. He withdrew his final appeal to make a presidential pardon possible, and Algeria’s top court cleared the legal obstacles in June. As of mid-October his family said they had no reply to their appeals. His case shows how a journalist’s freedom can become a diplomatic bargaining chip. Writer Boualem Sansal was pardoned last year after a German appeal, while France’s pleas were ignored. Elsewhere on the continent, Eritrea has held Dawit Isaak incommunicado since 2001, and RSF’s 2026 index recorded Niger’s fall of 37 places to 120th.
In Europe, Turkey accounted for 42 of the 47 arrest, detention or imprisonment cases monitored across the continent in the first half of 2026. They included DW Turkish journalist Alican Uludağ, arrested in February on a charge of “insulting the president” over social media posts. At the end of 2025, 148 journalists were held in detention across Europe, 36 of them in Azerbaijan alone.
In the United Kingdom, Leicestershire Police arrested at least five journalists on 8 October under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act while they covered a protest outside a drone factory. They were held for about three hours and de-arrested after giving their details, despite having identified themselves as press. Police said they arrested everyone at the scene to carry out a thorough investigation, and the National Union of Journalists wrote to police chiefs about overreach. Nobody was jailed, but the effect on the next reporter’s decision to go to the next protest is the same.
In the United States, CPJ counted 166 press freedom violations in the first ten months of 2026, and at least ten journalists have been subpoenaed. Independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort were arrested by federal agents in January and charged in connection with their coverage of a protest at a Minnesota church. The prosecution’s case concerns what happened inside the church, while press groups say it criminalises newsgathering. The matter is before the courts, and we do not prejudge it.
In Asia, Hong Kong’s courts sentenced publisher Jimmy Lai, 78, to 20 years in February under the national security law. In the Philippines, Frenchie Mae Cumpio, a local radio journalist who reported on military and police abuses, was held for more than six years, and the latest reports say she was convicted in January on terrorism-financing charges. Press advocates describe the case as part of a pattern of “red-tagging”, which labels critics as terrorist sympathisers. China held at least 50 journalists in CPJ’s last census, and Myanmar 30.
In the Americas, CPJ counted at least six journalists killed in Mexico by August, and the Inter-American Press Association says fewer than 1% of journalist killings there are solved. In Guatemala, José Rubén Zamora remains in detention, and another journalist, Evelio López, was shot dead on 2 October after speaking publicly about threats.
In total, CPJ counted 330 journalists in prison worldwide on 1 December 2025, the 5th straight year above 300. 61% were held on anti-state charges, and nearly half had not been sentenced. RSF reports that the average press freedom score across 180 countries is the lowest in the index’s 25-year history, with the legal indicator falling in 110 countries.
How truth is hunted
Afriktimes’ study across the cases evidences that the methods are few and they repeat. The first is the catch-all law: cybercrime in Nigeria, terrorism in Algeria, “insulting the president” in Turkey, national security in Hong Kong. The statute changes from country to country, but the target does not. The second is the process as the penalty. The invitation, the long wait, the bail “fee” and the remand before trial all cost the journalist, and many of these stories end without a conviction because the cost has already been charged.
The third is the hunt for the source. Police in Ekiti and Osogbo pressed reporters to name theirs, and in the United States subpoenas do the same job. A newsroom with no confidential sources has little left to publish. The fourth is the delegitimising label. In the Philippines it is “terrorist sympathiser”. In Osun, a government-aligned page answered an Insight Links report last year by calling the outlet a blog and its sources opposition operatives. When the label sticks, nobody has to engage with the evidence.
The fifth is violence followed by silence. In Mexico and Guatemala, the clearest sign of the hunt is that killers go unpunished. The sixth is hostage logic. When a journalist is jailed to extract something from another state, as with Gleizes and Sansal, the report itself is no longer the issue at all.
Why the small outlets
Alternative journalism exists because the mainstream so often could not or would not do the work. Community radio, investigative non-profits, one-person platforms and local online television follow budgets, contracts and ministry records, usually in places the big newsrooms do not reach. They are also the cheapest to break. They have no legal department, no owner with a phone number for the governor, and no reserve fund. Calling them blogs or opposition tools is a way of saying nobody has to answer them.
However, that same independence carries a duty. A story must be accurate, the accused must be given the right of reply, and the newsroom must correct what it gets wrong. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the one we expect of every outlet we defend. The remedy for a false report is a correction, or a civil suit that a court tests with evidence. It is not remand, and it is not a morning in an interview room.
Our position
AfrikTimes calls first for the release of Daniel Ojukwu. The charges against him and Fisayo Soyombo should be withdrawn, because a complaint about a published report belongs to court. We also call on the Inspector-General to end policing by invitation. He should direct that complaints about published reports are not police business, and that no reporter is pressed to name a source.
The National Assembly should repeal criminal defamation and narrow the Cybercrimes Act so that it cannot reach journalism. In Osun, the Ministry of Youth Affairs should publish what it did with N25 million, and should not question the reporter who asked.
Journalists must also defend each other. The NUJ, the Guild of Editors and every newsroom should treat a petition against one platform as a petition against all, with pooled legal support. Finally, President Tebboune can free Christophe Gleizes with one signature, and he should sign.
Jailing or summoning a reporter does not make the story untrue, and it does not bring the money back. It tells the public that the question was a mistake and we intend to keep asking for it.
