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On Monday,
President Muhammadu Buhari’s Chief Security Officer, Bashir Abubakar, conducted
a bizarre, one-sided summary trial in his office.
Abubakar was the complainant,
prosecutor and the judge. The defendants were The PUNCH and its State House
Correspondent, Olalekan Adetayo, whom Abubakar accused of writing a ‘sponsored
story’ and penning an ill-motivated opinion article on the President’s health.
It was in vain that Adetayo tried
to explain to the CSO that the said story, Fresh anxiety in Aso Rock over
Buhari’s poor health, and his column, Seat of power’s event centres going into
extinction, were done in the ordinary course of his duties, and without any
ulterior motive.
Thereafter, events took a strange
turn. The CSO left the dock where he was the complainant, donned the wig of a
prosecutor and levelled more false allegations against our reporter. Then he
quickly adorned himself in the robe of a judge and pronounced, with misguided
magisterial flair, that our reporter should be thrown out of the Villa.
Abubakar’s judgement was then
enforced by one of his minions who seized our reporter’s State House pass,
marched him to the gate of the Villa and paraded him before a platoon of
security operatives who were ordered to bar him from entering the Villa in the
future.
Abubakar’s harassment and
humiliation of our reporter are unwarranted, unjustified and, therefore,
condemnable. His reckless display of power is an abuse of his office and an
affront to our newspaper.
This sordid event would have been
comical if not for its tragic implications for our democracy, the freedom of
the press and the inalienable right of every Nigerian citizen to the freedom of
expression.
As our paper went to bed last
night, we were made aware of the efforts of saner and less-emotive heads within
the presidency to convene a parley to resolve the issue.
We are happy to inform the
authorities that our reporter will neither attend the meeting planned for today
nor subject himself to yet another Kangaroo trial.
We hold that besides presidential
introspection, what this situation requires is not a soft landing for a
security operative who acted beyond his brief. What Abubakar deserves is a
stinging reprimand from his superiors, heavy censure from his principal and the
outrage of all right-thinking members of the society.
We are aware that, only recently,
Abubakar usurped some of the functions of the President’s battery of media aides
and convened a meeting where he sought to teach State House correspondents how
to slant, spin and scribble stories on the President and the Presidency.
Our demands are simple: a full and
unqualified apology from Abubakar and the presidency, and the unconditional
restoration of the reportorial access and privileges withdrawn from our
reporter. The apology should be addressed to our reporter and our newspaper.
In this dispensation, vindictive
and overbearing security operatives, like Abubakar, ought to bear three things
in mind as they carry out their duties. One, Nigeria is a democracy, the
martial antecedents of its current president notwithstanding. Two, those who
hold positions of authority do so at the pleasure of the public. Three, public
servants, no matter how influential, are mere tenants in the corridors of
power.
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