Reports of escalating attacks, intimidation and harassment of citizens by governors are becoming too frequent and discomfiting. This is becoming a grave threat to media freedom, freedom of expression, and citizens’ right of access and circulation of information about things around them.
Earlier in September, Hassan Mai-Waya Kangiwa was arrested and handcuffed allegedly on the orders of Governor Nasiru Idris for releasing a viral video showing the deplorable healthcare conditions including patients lying on bare metal beds without mattresses at Kangiwa General Hospital in Kebbi State.
On Wednesday September 24, the Imo State Police Command moved to arraign Chinedu Agu, a lawyer and known critic of Governor Hope Uzodimma. Agu, who was arrested by operatives of the Inspector-General of Police’s X-Squad Unit following a petition by a pro-Uzodinma group, Imo Democratic Alliance.
Imo state Police spokesperson, DSP Henry Okoye, said Agu’s charges bordered on cyberstalking, defamation of character, incitement of civil disturbances, and conduct likely to cause a breach of the peace and it is being ‘carried out in accordance with the rule of law and with due respect for his fundamental human rights.’ Others cases include the harassment of Blessing Okonkwo, a freelance broadcast journalist in Anambra State, in July 2025 and the hours-long detention of Ibrahim Garba, a Daily Trust photojournalist in Kano, in August 2025.
In September 2024, Samuel Samuel II was arrested in Plateau State for making a statement that involved the criticism of the governor.
On November 9, 2024, 18-year-old Hamdiyya Sidi was arrested by the Sokoto State Police after she posted a video criticising the state governor, Ahmad Aliyu, over the rampant banditry and neglect of people displaced by insecurity. Though the police said she was not arrested for criticizing the governor but for another incident on November 3, where she allegedly incited some women in a village in Wurno Local Government Area of the state against the governor. Released later, Sidi was on November 13, 2024 kidnapped by gunmen, beaten and pushed out of a moving tricycle and left for dead. She sustained serious injuries.
She was rearrested again and charged in a Sharia court ‘for the use of abusive language and criticisms against constituted authority in the state.’ In addition to this, Sidi also faces charges in regular court for incitement. During a hearing in January, her lawyer, Abba Hikima, said they were stalked, accosted, and intimidated. Sidi last appeared in court in February 2025. Though her case was adjourned to March 13 and 14, 2025, nothing has been heard since then.
In August 2022, Agba Jalingo, a journalist and publisher of Cross River Watch was arrested on allegation of defamation against the sister-in-law of the then Cross River State Governor, Ben Ayade. He was later transferred to the Police Criminal Instigation Department in Abuja. Earlier in August 2019, he was arrested on the orders of the Cross River State government and charged with treasonable felony, terrorism and cybercrime for accusing the governor of diverting public funds. He was later discharged and acquitted in March 2022.
In a similar development, a blogger on the Eagles Foresight platform, Bashiru Hammed Adewale Olamilekan was arrested on May 13, 2022 and detained by the Department of State Services (DSS) in Ogun State for publishing a story relating to purported criminal records of the Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun in the United States. He spent over 100 days in detention despite deleting the said publication and tendering an apology to the governor.
What some of the governors are doing are direct attacks on citizens’ right to be part of the vital check on power. They’ve also become a symptom of broader systemic disease that prioritises image over integrity and suppression over solution.
They are direct assaults on Sections 22 and 39 of the Nigerian constitution which mandates the media to uphold the fundamental objectives of the government and ensure the accountability of the government to the people while Section 39 guarantees the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press to hold opinions and impart information and ideas without interference, though there are exceptions for national security and specific professions.
Daily Trust calls on political leaders to end the disconcerting use of state instruments to violate the rights of journalists and other citizens. They should rather challenge such media publications or journalists or citizens with libel or defamation in a court of law instead of criminalizing the Cybercrime Act.
Democracy is not for the benefit of politicians or the connected alone but for all Nigerians. Therefore, we call on the National Assembly to ensure that its Acts are not being used to trample on the rights of the citizens they ought to protect. We also call on the Nigeria Police to note that it is not in their interest to be used against the citizens.
The governors should also note that regional and international human rights organisations are taking notes and using their actions to gauge how the tenets of democratic values are being practiced by our leaders.
There should be no threat to media freedom and democracy, which are anchored on accountability and good governance.
However, while calling on media houses, their reporters and activists to always approach their investigations and advocacies with utmost sense of responsibility, the federal government should order immediate investigations into all such arrests and hold those behind them to account. No attempt should be made to criminalise free speech or shut down any criticisms or circulation of any information not favourable to any political leader or the elite, provided they are true.