Widespread condemnations and dreads of the dark past on Thursday greeted Nigerian government-sponsored restrictions on Peoples Gazette’s website earlier this week.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar joined other prominent Nigerians and rights groups to censure federal authorities for blacklisting the novel digital newspaper’s website.
The Gazette’s web address and alternative domain names were rendered inaccessible to a majority of Internet users in Nigeria after telecommunication networks implemented an illegal directive from the Nigerian government to block access to the website.
The Gazette learnt from top federal sources that the directive to take the newspaper offline had stemmed from an October 2020 story that cast a spotlight on Bolaji Gambari (son to President Muhammadu Buhari’s chief of staff) as the new head of a budding cabal of administration associates inside the Presidential Villa.