Nigeria: How Nigeria's Police Used Telecom Surveillance to Lure, Arrest Journalists

16 February 2020

As reporters for Nigeria's Premium Times newspaper, Samuel Ogundipe and Azeezat Adedigba told CPJ they spoke often over the phone. They had no idea that their regular conversations about work and their personal lives were creating a record of their friendship.

On August 9, 2018, Ogundipe published an article about a communication between Nigeria's police chief and vice president. Days later, police investigating his source issued a written summons, CPJ reported at the time. It was not addressed to Ogundipe and made no mention of his article or the charges he would later face of theft and possession of police documents. Instead, as Ogundipe recounted, police called Adedigba for questioning in connection with a slew of serious crimes, allegations that evaporated after police used her phone to summon her friend to the station.

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