Police hold FIJ journalist Daniel Ojukwu for ‘cybercrime’

Daniel Ojukwu, a journalist with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), has been detained by the Intelligence Response Team of the Inspector General of Police and is currently being held at the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, Lagos state, the investigative news outlet has reported.

FIJ, an independent news platform disclosed this on Friday while revealing that the reporter had gone missing on Wednesday, May 1 and could not be contacted by family and colleagues neither was his whereabouts known.

Read also: World Press Freedom Day: NUJ advocates for more protective policies, salutes Journalists

This prompted the news platform to report a case of a missing person report at police stations in the area where Ojukwu was headed after 24 hours.

FIJ said it hired the service of a private detective who tracked the last active place of his phones to an address in Isheri Olofin, a location it now believes was where the police originally picked him up.

Ojukwu’s family knew of his detention at Panti as authorities in the Force accused him of violating the 2015 Cybercrime Act, FIJ reports.

“The arresting officers are part of the IG Monitoring Team. They said when they are done arresting the other people on their watchlist in Lagos, they would transfer him and others to Abuja,” a relative of Ojukwu said.

Ojukwu’s kidnap came on the same day as World Press Freedom Day 2023 when men of the Area F Police in Lagos apprehended him for telling them to stop punching a driver.

Read also: Police insist FIJ’s BoT chair must produce Fisayo Soyombo over published investigation

Nigerian journalists on World Press Freedom Day joined their colleagues globally to mark the day and call for press freedom.

Bukky Shonibare, the chairman of FIJ’s Board of Trustees, had been invited by the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre at their Abuja office in March 2024.

FIJ stated that the Force had identified its story on how Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire, the former senior special assistant on Sustainable Development Goals 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!

Ademuyiwa Adejobi, Police Public Relations Officer, while speaking on Channels TV show, ‘Politics Today’ stated that there were “two or three weighty allegations” against FIJ and its founder ‘Fisayo Soyombo.