The Department of State Services (DSS) has released two reporters from Jay 101.9 FM, Jos, who were allegedly and wrongfully arrested during President Bola Tinubu’s visit to Plateau State on Saturday for the burial of the mother of the APC national chairman, Prof. Nentawe Yilwadta Goshwe.
A credible security source told journalists that the detained reporters, Ruth Marcus and Keshia Jang, were freed after the Director-General of the DSS, Oluwatosin Ajayi, learned of their arrest and ordered their immediate release.
The source said the DG personally instructed the service to contact the National President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Alhassan Yahaya.
“The Director assured the NUJ President that the new DSS leadership treasures the importance of a free press in a democracy, and has ordered a thorough investigation into the matter. He further assured the NUJ President that any officer found culpable will be appropriately sanctioned.
“The new DG is correcting the wrongs he inherited. One of them is overzealousness. This is why the new DG has not failed to admit so whenever the Service makes mistakes. We are witnesses to several instances when the Service apologised and even compensated victims of wrongful arrests,” he said.
MEANWHILE, the leader of Gaskiya Alliance (GA), a Kaduna State-based civil society organisation, Bello Abdullahi, has urged the National Security Adviser (NSA), Nuhu Ribadu, to, as a matter of urgent national security imperative, take drastic measures against the Chairman of Lagos State chapter of National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Mustapha Sego.
In a petition, Abdullahi maintained that the recent viral video featuring Sego serves as a chillingly precise case study that Nigeria’s democracy is exhibiting the classic symptoms of institutional capture.
While contending that the NURTW chairman’s open threat to kill political opponents of the ruling party was not merely a violent outburst, the GA boss described the audacious display as “a performative assertion of impunity.”
“This represents a critical failure in the state’s monopoly on legitimate force, a cornerstone of modern statehood as defined by Max Weber. When non-state actors openly wield the threat of violence as a political tool with confidence, it signals that the sovereign authority of the Nigerian state is being actively contested and eroded from within,” he added.
Abdullahi expressed apprehension over the implications of such wanton display of violent tendencies on the much anticipated 2027 general election, stressing that the world and indeed well-meaning citizens and lovers of democracy are waiting to see what becomes of the threat.
