Abuja Journalist Stanley Ugagbe Has Been Abducted — And Prime Suspect Is the Police

Fejiro Oliver, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Secret Reporters, an online news platform, has accused Emem Usoro, the Deputy Governor for Operations at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), of being responsible for the abduction of Stanley Ugagbe, a senior reporter at Secret Reporters, by the police.

FIJ initially learnt of Ugagbe’s disappearance through a report on CJID’s Press Attack Tracker, a platform that documents verified attacks on journalists across West Africa. The report noted that four unidentified men abducted the journalist from his residence in Abuja on Wednesday.

On Thursday, FIJ contacted Oliver, and he stated that the police, acting on the orders of Usoro, were responsible for Ugagbe’s disappearance.

“The Nigerian Police carried out the operation while he was on his way home from an official training. They took him to his house and went to his room in Jikwoyi to take his official laptop and phone and whisked him to an unknown location,” he said.

“Our lawyer and editor, alongside a senior reporter, went to former SARS to check their facilities, went to FCT Command and HQ, and they can’t find him there. One of the reporters went to Jikwoyi Police Station and Karu Police Station to check if the policemen who came from outside base were there to document their presence, and none of such happened. They checked the two stations’ cells, and he’s not there.

“We believe Emem Usoro has used the police to kidnap him in what we believe is an attempt for extrajudicial killing to stop further publications she feels are damaging. We have officially lodged a kidnap complaint to Jikwoyi Police Station.”https://fij.ng/article/abuja-journalist-stanley-ugagbe-has-been-abducted-and-prime-suspect-is-the-police/