The Director General, State Security Service (SSS), Yusuf Bichi, says the service has removed a journalist, Lanre Arogundade, from its watch list in which his name featured for 38 years.
Bichi said this when a delegation from the Nigerian chapter of the International Press Institute (IPI Nigeria) visited him in Abuja.
The Secretary of IPI Nigeria, Ahmed Shekarau, in a statement on Thursday, said the visit was part of the organisation’s ongoing high-level engagements on the safety of journalists and press freedom in Nigeria
Shekarau said that Arogundade was on Feb. 10 intercepted and detained by officers of the SSS upon his arrival at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos, from Banjul, Gambia.
He said the Director of the Lagos-based International Press Centre (IPC) went to train journalists on conflict reporting.
Speaking on the circumstances leading to the interception of the journalist on his arrival in Lagos, Bichi said the Service acted based on a decades-long watchlist, which demanded that Arogundade should be quizzed whenever he returned from a foreign country.
He said the journalist was put on the list during his days as the President of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) between 1984 and 1985.
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The SSS boss said after Arogundade was initially removed, there arose another case of mistaken identity triggered by a request by the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
According to him, the service don’t intercept people willfully at airports, we do so based on requests from other government agencies who may have issues with the persons affected.
Bichi emphasised the need for close collaboration between the media and the service.
He said it was necessary to address many of the ‘misconceptions’, because their mission was peace, adding that the service was too friendly to be antagonistic of the media. (NAN)
