Group Calls On Nigerian President To Release Journalist

A media protection group known as the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), has urgently called upon Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, to release a journalist that was arrested in Kaduna on incitement charges last week.

Nigerian journalist, Jacob Onjewu Dickson, is the journalist and question, and the CPJ has demanded that he be released without any delay.

Dickson is an online journalist for the website Authentic News Daily. He was called in for questioning by police after they suspected that his piece about Kaduna state Governor Nasiru Elrufa and his run-in’s with youths throwing him with rocks, could incite religious violence in the country.

Elrufa was allegedly trying to bring peace between residents of two neighbouring communities.

Robert Mahoney, Deputy Executive Director of the CPJ, said that President Buhari should not let his ideas of press freedom be challenged in Nigeria:

“…President Muhammadu Buhari should not let state officials make a mockery of his laudable commitments to press freedom, even as he utters them…We call on state officials to drop the charges against Jacob Onjewu Dickson and release him without delay,” he said in a statement.

News of Dickson’s arrest comes after president Buhari recently claimed and bragged thay there were no journalists behind bars in Nigeria.

Dickson is expected to appear in court on Thursday.