VOA Journalist: Why ‘Drunk’ Nigerian Soldiers Did Not Kill Me

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"Why drunk Nigerian soldiers did not kill me", VOA reporter arrested by soldiers in Oyigbo rendered her awful experience

Recall that on Saturday, 28th November, 2020, we reported how the Nigerian soldiers arrested and detained, for five hours, a journalist working with the Voice Of America- Hausa Service, because she was seen granting interview to the residents in Oyigbo (Obigbo), suburb of River State.

Grace Alheri Abdu, the victim, has told The Neighbourhood she is grateful to God after returning alive to her hotel room.

Speaking to The Neighbourhood in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, on Saturday night soon after her release, a thrust from the statement of the U.S Embassy in Nigeria, the West African Journalists’ Association (WAJA), Foreign and Local Human Rights Groups, and online campaign directed to the Nigeria Military heiracy;

According to her, the drunk soldiers had told her she was alive for two reasons-  she was a female, and secondly, not a local journalist.

“They told me to thank my God that I was a female journalist, and not from any of the media houses based in Port Harcourt otherwise that they would have ‘wasted’ (killed extra-judicially) me and that nothing would happen.”

Recounting her awful experience: Grace, on a VOA, Africa Division assignment, said the drunk soldiers accused her of streaming a LIVE broadcast transmitting military operations in the “security area” without permission.

She denied ever running a live broadcast.

Grace narrated: How she arrived Oyigbo through a lift from her relation, also a journalist; How she walked straight to a group of soldiers along Oyigbo Expressway and introduced herself; How she also seek the soldiers' permission to take photo shots of the burnt Oyigbo Police Station. However, one of the soldiers told her that hence it was a police station, it was only the police that could grant her request.

Burning with the zeal to accomplish her assignment, she moved to the area of the burnt police station, and with no single policeman in sight. Grace clicked her camera phone, just once. That was all that the soldiers needed to pounce on her in an ordeal she told this newspaper confirmed the reports of human rights abuses residents in the area had been undergoing in the hands of Nigerian soldiers since the lockdown of the area.

The soldiers, who accused her of working for an unknown anti-government agent, told her that journalists were Nigeria’s problems. According to them, instead of reporting the recent recession, hunger and other national malaise, journalists had been reporting soldiers’ atrocity in Oyigbo.

To possibly take their pound of flesh, at least on the journalist in their custody, the soldiers ordered Grace to sit on the ground which was wet. The supervisor of the soldiers hit her phone on the ground after searching it but found no video or image of the burnt down police station which she had deleted when the first soldier pointed his gun at her and threatened to shoot.

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As night approached, the soldiers insisted Grace should write an apology statement for streaming LIVE, and without consent, military operation in Oyigbo. She agreed to obey the soldier only if she could get approval from her Supervisor in Abuja. Shortly later, Grace received a call from her senior officer who told her that a particular ethnic group was destabilizing Oyigbo and other parts of Nigeria. The soldiers became trilled. 

Grace also confided in The Neighborhood that the senior officer apologised to her, asking that she treated the whole bitter experience as though it never occurred.

The Neighbourhood could not reach the Spokesman of the 6 Division, Nigerian Army, Major Charles Ekeocha, for his reaction to the journalist’s arrest and about five hours of detention.

Mr Ike Wigodo, the River State Secretary to the Nigeria Union of Journalists ( NUJ) in response to the newspaper’s inquiry of whether the Council was aware of the incident, said it was not reported to them. However, when he was told about the release of the journalist on Saturday night, Wigodo heaved a sigh of relief, giving thanks to God.

A human rights activist, Enefaa Georgewill who was one of the persons that hyped Grace's arrest on social media platforms had also shared the news of her release. He told The Neighbourhood that they (Civil Society Organisations) would not yield to “dictatorship”.

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