Members of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Nasarawa State Council on Tuesday resolved to boycott all police activities over the arrest and detention of their colleague by the police.
A statement signed by Suleiman Abubakar and Isaac Ukpoju, the chapel’s Chairman and Secretary respectively, said the decision was reached after exhaustive deliberation on the incident at congress.
It condemned the arrest, detention and alleged torture of Hir Joseph of Daily Trust newspaper.
Joseph was arrested over a report published in the May 9 edition of the newspaper, captioned: “Female members of NSCDC, Police personnel demand rescue of Chibok girls.”
The statement said that the police and media over the years had established cordial working relationship and wondered why the police did not leverage on the relationship to resolve the differences.
“Congress, therefore, agreed to boycott all police functions pending when the police will tender an unreserved apology to the union for the arrest, detention and torture of its member at the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Lafia,” it said.
The police on Monday arraigned the reporter before a Magistrates’ Court in Lafia and charged him with injurious falsehood over the report.
The police alleged that the story was published with the intent to cast aspersions on its credibility and undermine its efforts to rescue the abducted school girls.
The Magistrate, Yakubu Eggah, granted the accused journalist bail in the sum of N150,000 with a surety in like sum and adjourned the case till June 19 for hearing.
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