Media harassment on the rise ahead of presidential elections, rights group

Human rights groups say that media harassment is on the rise in Nigeria following the arrest of two journalists charged with sedition after publishing critical news reports about President Olusegun Obasanjo's government. Rotimi Durojaiye of the Daily Independent newspaper and Gbenga Aruleba of Africa Independent Television were in an Abuja federal court on Tuesday facing six counts of working �with intent to bring into hatred or contempt or excite disaffection against the person of the president�. Durojaiye, the aviation correspondent for the Daily Independent, had on 12 June published a report about the real age and cost of a presidential jet recently acquired for Obasanjo. The following day Aruleba also made comments on the jet issue in his daily political talk show. After both reporters pleaded not guilty to the charges, Judge Babs Kuewumi ordered that they be held by the widely feared state security police, known as State Security Services (SSS), until conditions for bail are reviewed on Thursday. Human rights activists from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) say the arrests show increasing intolerance of criticism by Obasanjo's government ahead of next year's crucial polls. "CPJ has documented an increase in harassment of the media in the run-up to the 2007 presidential elections," executive director Anne Cooper said in a statement on Tuesday. "It is particularly worrying that the SSS, which reports directly to the presidency, is behind many of these attacks," she added. The CPJ has called for an immediate end to the prosecution of the journalists and their release. Legal experts expressed surprise at the decision to charge the reporters for sedition, a British colonial law they say is widely considered void after the Supreme Court ruled in 1983 it was inconsistent with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of expression. "What the prosecution is doing is to muscle the press," Okey Ozoho, one of the lawyers that appeared for the journalists told the court. "The apex court has declared the offence of sedition unconstitutional," he said, referring to Nigeria's supreme court. Officials in the public prosecutor's office contacted by IRIN on Wednesday declined to comment. Obasanjo won elections in 1999 that ended a 15-year stretch of brutal military dictatorship. Nigeria's constitutional term limit prevents him from running for re-election in next year's poll. dm/nr/ss