Last week, the State Security Service (S.S.S.) invaded the privacies of the Insider Weekly news magazine, seized copies of its current edition and impounded computers and other office materials. The office of the magazine was also sealed and a member of staff briefly detained. 

This event marks a sad reminder of the dark days of military dictatorship when journalists and security officials had running battles. History has however shown that the security officials and the government of the day have always lost this age-old battle. Our security officials should also have taken the lesson that each time magazine or newspaper houses are harassed, publications seized, offices sealed or journalists arrested, the desperation and insecurity of the government is exposed.

The statement of the SSS chronicling its grievances against the Insider Weekly magazine cannot justify its blatantly unconstitutional act. If the SSS or any other security agency is concerned that any journalist has violated the Constitution or the law, the option is to follow due process and initiate prosecution.

Again the security agency will need to make the appropriate distinction between President Obasanjo as an individual and the Nigerian State. The SSS in our view is wrong to equate President Obasanjo as the personification of Nigeria. Sovereignty under our Constitution lies with the people. If any journalist or magazine writes or publishes in derogation or even defamation of the President as a person, his legal options are well known to him. He should sue the magazine to court. In any case, if the SSS believes that the story of the Insider Weekly magazine is false and mischievous, its action in seizing the magazine and locking up its offices, is a strategically wrong response. It goes to excite curiosity in the mind of the average Nigerian, suggesting that the story may be true, hence such blatant and desperate action.

A newspaper or magazine that consistently publishes falsehood will sooner lose public credibility. It does not need the SSS or any other security agency to run it out of business; the law courts are constitutionally vested with powers to hand down appropriate sanctions to such erring corporate outfits and individuals. It is pertinent to point out that it is a disservice to Nigeria’s fledging democracy for the SSS to usurp the powers of the Courts or constitute itself into law.

CRP therefore calls on the SSS to return the seized copies of the Insider Weekly publications, re-open and vacate its premises and refrain from further unconstitutional and illegal interference in the magazine’s constitutional freedom to publish.
 
 

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