Date Published: 11/11/09

SSS Summons editor over “revolt” story

Joseph Ushigiale

Apparently unsettled by the call for an uprising by a chieftain of the opposition All Nigerian Peoples Party, Alhaji Buba Galadima, the State Security Service has summoned the online editor of Thisday Newspaper, Mr. Joseph Ushigiale for questioning. Ushigiale reportedly conducted the interview.

The invitation to Ushigiale may have signaled the increasing hostility of the Umaru Yar’Adua administration to press freedom. Only last month, privately owned African Independent Television (AIT) was ordered to chose between yanking off caustic presenter of their political programme “Focus Nigeria”, Mr. Gbenga Aruleba, and the revocation of the TV’s operating licence. AIT management chose the former option.

Since the publication of the controversial interview in Thisday newspaper, Presidency sources told Pointblanknews.com, “Mr. President has been inundated by inquiries from top government functionaries, PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) chieftains, friends of government, among other well-meaning Nigerians.”

According to the sources, “the C-in-C (Yar’Adua) had to respond to the pressure mounted by all these persons by ordering his National Security Adviser to wade into the matter and present a comprehensive report.” The source added that Ushigiale’s invitation may have been the result of the NSA’s threat to deal with the SSS Director-General for what he said were the increasing security lapses from his end.

Incidentally, Ushigiale, who was media aide to former Governor Donald Duke is just smarting from a brush with the government of his home state, Cross River, over a report on the disputed oil wells between Cross River and neighbouring Akwa-Ibom State. His home government had at some point declared him a persona non grata forcing the journalist, who lost his mother to the crisis, to relocate his nuclear family to Lagos.

His organization, Thisday newspaper, has reportedly not helped matters. Since the interview ran, Yar’Adua’s media aide, Segun Adeniyi (a former editor of Thisday) has been reportedly mounting pressure on his former colleagues in the newspaper house to “release” Ushigiale to the SSS for questioning. Sources in the SSS told Pointblanknews.com that Adeniyi was responsible for soft-soaping Ushigiale into responding to the SSS invitation. He is billed to appear at the SSS headquarters in Abuja “in the next few days.”

The SSS boss Afakriya Gadzama, it would be recalled, is being reportedly under investigation for what security sources say is his less than professional relationship with the Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission, (UBEC) Dr. Ahmed Modibbo. Gadzama, who was Modibbo’s classmate in Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, is reportedly responsible for covering up all the dirty past of his former classmate, and blocking investigation into the missing billions in UBEC, for a fee.

Sources in the NSA’s office scoffed at the SSS invitation to the Thisday editor, stressing that “we had thought that the era of this kind of armchair investigation was over? How would they know what is happening in the field when all they do is hop cap in hand from one commission or agency to another, begging?”

He quizzed: “What else do they want to hear from the editor?” If I were him, I wouldn’t even appear before them. SSS boys should pay him for giving them a peep into the minds of the opposition in Nigeria. They don’t do anything apart from running after their former schoolmates and covering their tracks for peanuts. Can you imagine that they are scratching their heads over what to do to Buba Galadima meanwhile they have summoned the editor. Something is wrong with these people,” the official concluded.

In the caustic interview published last weekend, Galadima, who was campaign co-coordinator of the Buhari Presidential Organization, challenged Nigerian youths to resist what he said, was a gradual but consistent slide to dictatorship by the Yar’Adua administration.

Declared Galadima: "it's the responsibility of all of us Nigerians to gird our loins and come out and let the government mobilize its military and police to roll out their tanks and shoot us all,” demanding, “How many can they kill?”

I think the time has come for the youths in this country to ask for transparency, justice and honesty from the government of the day so as to secure their future. We cannot allow things to continue the way they are any longer. We need to let this cabal know that enough is enough,” he affirmed.