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Dialogue Africa condemns harassment of its West Africa editor, Adejuwan Soyinka, by agents of Nigeria’s Ministry of National Security.
Soyinka was detained for six hours when he arrived in Lagos on a flight from the UK on Sunday. Immigration officials stopped him citing problems with his passport. However, when questioned later by agents of the Ministry of State Security, he was told that his name had been placed on a watch list by another unnamed state security agency for unknown reasons.
He was later released, but his passport was withheld pending confirmation from the Ministry of State Security that the unnamed agency that put him on the watch list was no longer interested in him.
Soyinka is an award-winning journalist who joined The Conversation Africa in February 2020. The Conversation is a global network of independent sources of research and expertise from the academic and research community. It publishes directly to the public and is free for other media to reprint.
Soyinka’s harassment will have a chilling effect not only on journalism, but also on academia. Media freedom and academic freedom are mutually beneficial and are important pillars of a free and democratic society. Journalists and academics should be free to publish the facts, no matter how inconvenient those facts may be to those in power.
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