Detained LEADERSHIP Editor, Correspondent Released Unconditionally



Group News Editor of LEADERSHIP Newspapers Group, Mr. Tony Amoekedo and Correspondent Chibuzo Ukaibe have both been released unconditionally by the police.

They were detained alongside two others at the Force Headquarters following a story this newspaper published on a “presidential directive” to attack key opposition political parties’ leaders.

While Mrs Chinyere Fred-Adegbulugbe, former editor of the LEADERSHIP Sunday, now executive director, human capital, and Mr Chuks Ohuegbe, managing editor were released late Monday night, while Amoekedo and Ukaibe were released about an hour ago.

The two had earlier filed a suit against the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, claiming the sum of N10m for breach of trust.

In a suit filed by the Company’s counsel Ugo Udoji Esq, in the Federal High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the applicants sought for enforcement of their fundamental human rights as guaranteed under SS. 34, 35 and 41 of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria enforceable under Section 46 of the said constitution and articles 4, 5, 6, articles 9 (2) of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (Ratification and Enforcement Act) and directing that the order operates as a stay against further arrest and detention of the applicants.

Read details of their detention shortly.

nuclearboy: Wait - Thot they said these guys FORGED something against the Presidency

Yet they have been unconditionally released?

Are we to infer then that they reported the truth?

LEADERSHIP, the Nigerian newspaper four of whose journalists were detained this week on the orders of President Goodluck Jonathan, has indicated it will challenge the infraction on its rights.

“The police have no right to arrest and illegally detain our journalists – or any other journalist – as they have done; we shall not let this violation go unchallenged,” the management of the company said in a press statement in in which it announced that the journalists have been let go.

It said that two of the journalists, Tony Amokeodo and Chibuzo Ukaibe, were only released conditionally, to report at the police headquarters at 10am every day.

“We wish to restate that these conditions are obnoxious and unacceptable in any democratic society,” the statement stressed.

“Our journalists do not work for the police and have no business reporting to the police headquarters while earning their pay at LEADERSHIP.

“We have it on very good authority that President Jonathan will not be satisfied until the journalists have disclosed their sources and turned in the source document.

“It is ridiculous that Jonathan’s government should be obsessed with having a document, which its handlers said was fictitious in the first place.

“We have no intention of indulging their vexatious desires and insist on our constitutional responsibility to hold the government accountable to the people and the inviolacy of the freedom of information law.”