The leadership of United Action Front of Civil Society, the Organised Platform of the Nigerian Civil Society on issues of Governance and Democracy in Nigeria, said it is concerned about the threat to life of a Nigerian investigative journalist, David Hundeyin, who is presently on asylum in Ghana.
This is contained in a press release signed by the Head, National Coordinating Centre, Olawale Okunniyi.
The Centre alleged that in a recent distress call, the Nigerian Government was allegedly orchestrating a plot to have him repatriated from Ghana ostensibly to “harass and unjustly detain him”.
Hundeyin has been one of the arrow heads in demand for the academic records of President Bola Tinubu to be made public by Chicago State University (CSU).
According to Hundeyin, Nigerian government was allegedly after him for leaking a secret document of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regarding ploy to invade Niger Republic against popular demands that political solution rather than military action should be deployed in resolving the Niger impasse following the ouster of civil rule on July 26, 2023. Hundeyin, in a distress call, pointedly alerted the world about the threat to his life by those uncomfortable with his style of investigative journalism and therefore demanded that the Tinubu regime should be held responsible if anything untoward happens to him in the course of his present travail.
The Centre statement reads in part: “The organised Civil Society on issues of governance and democracy therefore calls on the international community to demand fair and just treatment for David Hundeyin in line with the extant provisions of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) of the African Union (AU) as well as the relevant provisions of the United Nations; particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). We are also compelled to make a demand on Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo to ensure the safety of David Hundeyin within the sovereignty of Ghana and to resist the pressure to expel the Nigerian journalist who is carrying out universally recognised duty of investigative reporting. We demand that the government of Ghana should respect that asylum status of David Hundeyin whose safety and life cannot be guaranteed in Nigeria at the moment.
“Finally, United Action Front of Civil Society demands that the Tinubu government should come clean on the allegation that it has mobilised security agencies to hunt down David Hundeyin within and outside Nigeria. We wish to alert the diplomatic community that about the danger of deporting David Hundeyin to Nigeria as the Tinubu government has, since assumption of office, demonstrated passion for undue arrests and extra-judicial detention with utter disregard for the rule of law”
Away from this, the Centre related it is deeply disturbed by the mysterious circumstances of the death of rising Afrobeat Music star, Ilerioluwa Aloba aka Mohbad, 27, whose remains was hurriedly interred after his sudden death without any ceremony.
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“It is however curious to us that Some video footages of Mohbad life ordeal showed him fleeing from assailants, beaten or bleeding from open wounds, with one Naira Marley, a British Nigerian and Ambassador of the Tinubu government, who was arrested for cyber-fraud in Nigeria in 2019 and multiple times for gang violence in the United Kingdom alleged of being behind Mohbad ordeal after he left the Marlian Record label in 2022 after citing a number of grievances, including unpaid royalties in his three-year stint at the Record label.
“We therefore call on the Nigerian Government to immediately set up an independent probe to prosecute all those connected with Mohbad life ordeal and eventual mysterious death, as we also condemn the forceful dispersal of mourners by the Nigerian Police on Thursday at the Lekki Toll Gate. We wish to caution the Nigerian police to desist from turning Nigeria into a full-blown police State” the statement said.
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