A litany of unsolved murders

On Sunday, September 20, 2009, the list of murdered Nigerian journalists grew with the shooting, in Lagos, of Bayo Ohu, an assistant political editor with The Guardian. The assailants invaded Mr. Ohu’s home early in the morning, shot him several times, and waited to make sure he was dead before they left, taking his laptop and cell phone along with them.

In October, 2006, Omololu Falobi, former features editor of The Punch who was until his death the executive director of Journalists Against AIDS, JAAIDS, was killed in his car while going home in the Alakuko area of Lagos.

On December 22, 2006, the chairman of the editorial board of This Day newspapers, Godwin Agbroko, was shot and killed in Lagos, on his way home from the office. Barely two years after, on the night of August 17, 2008, another member of This Day’s editorial board, Paul Abayomi Ogundeji, was also shot dead as he returned home.

A month from now, Nigerians will mark the 23rd anniversary of the assassination of the founding editor in chief of Newswatch magazine, Dele Giwa. On Sunday October 19, 1986 an explosion tore through the dining room of his Number 25, Talabi Street, Ikeja residence, seriously injuring the editor. The explosion was from a bomb, delivered to him as sealed parcel. Giwa died soon after.

In August, 1990, two Nigerian journalists, Tayo Awotunsin of the Daily Champion, and Krees Imodibe of The Guardian disappeared in Monrovia, where they were covering the Liberian Civil War. They were later discovered to have died at the hands of rebels belonging to Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia.

In early 1996, Bagauda Kaltho, senior correspondent for The News, disappeared. The government of General Sani Abacha later claimed that Kaltho mistakenly blew himself up while trying to plant a bomb at Durbar Hotel, Kano, on January 18, 1996.

Also on February 26, 1998, Tunde Oladepo, senior correspondent with The Guardian was killed in his home in Abeokuta, in the presence of his wife and two daughters. The masked attackers waited to be sure he was dead before they left.

The International Federation of Journalists’ President, Jim Boumelha, noted in 2007 that “violence against journalists remains at extremely high levels for the third year in a row... Our colleagues have been targeted because of their work, or killed covering dangerous stories often in the rush to cover breaking news”.

A statement by UNESCO to mark World Press Freedom Day 2007 showed that between January 1992 and August 2006 not less than 580 journalists were killed worldwide “in the line of duty”.

A breakdown by the Committee to Protect Journalists showed that about 70 per cent of this number were “murdered”, while the rest the rest were killed in “crossfire, combat-related circumstances [and] other dangerous assignments”.

“Countries involved in violent conflict” are classified as the most dangerous places for journalists. But even in countries that are not at war, like Nigeria, the lives and safety of journalists are often at risk.

The 2007 UNESCO World Press Freedom Day statement went on to state that “in the last 15 years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, about 85 per cent of all journalists’ murderers faced neither investigation nor prosecution for their crimes. Even when murders were more fully investigated and some convictions obtained, the masterminds were brought to justice in just seven percent of the cases.”

In Nigeria, other than the attempted murder of the publisher of The Guardian, Alex Ibru – who was seriously injured in Lagos in February 1996 when gunmen fired at his car – none of the attacks listed above has been resolved, nor have any of the killers been brought to justice

It is this tragic fact – that violent attacks on journalists will not elicit much more than verbal denouncements – that remains a cause for great concern. As the UNESCO statement said: “Impunity only makes the situation worse. As long as perpetrators know that they will not be held accountable for the crimes they committed, journalists remain easy targets.”