The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Wednesday called on the
Nigerian Government to drop all criminal charges against journalist Jacob
Dickson and release him without delay.
According to a statement made available to the press in Dakar on Wednesday
by the CPJ, Dickson has been held in pre-trial detention on incitement
charges since Friday.
“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,” CPJ Deputy Executive Director,
Robert Mahoney, urged.
According to the statement, Police invited Dickson, a reporter for the
news website Authentic News Daily, to the Kaduna State Police station on
Thursday to discuss on April 27.
Dickson was said to have written a report that cited witnesses as saying
youths had pelted the state governor, Nasir El-Rufai, with rocks as he
tried to broker peace between residents of two adjacent neighbourhoods.
CPJ said that Nigerian Police arrested Dickson after questioning him at
the station in the central Nigerian town of Kaduna on Friday.
Then they took him to the Kaduna Magistrates Court, charged him with
incitement and returned him to custody the same day.
His trial is scheduled to begin May 12.
Meanwhile, CPJ noted that as Dickson was put under custody, the Minister
of Culture and Information, Lai Mohammed, on the same day delivered an
address on behalf of President Buhari to a meeting of the Federation of
African Journalists hosted by the National Union of Journalists in Abuja.
Mohammed stressed to the gathering the importance of a free media and
claimed that not a single journalist is being detained or harassed in
Nigeria today.
(PANA/NAN)