Police Clamp Down On The Media In Akwa Ibom

Sahara Reporters

25 April 2011

Police Clamp Down On The Media In Akwa Ibom

 

Less than 24 hours to the governorship election in Akwa Ibom State, the police in the state raided a private printing press in Uyo on Sunday night and carted away production materials and several copies of some local newspapers while they were on production. Some journalists were arrested and later released in the morning.

But the director of the printing press and two of his staffers are still being detained in an unknown location by the police.

The raided printing press, Aswill, is in

Akpan Etuk Street

in the heart of Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom State, and the affected papers are Global Concord, Pivot News and Weekly Insight.

Mr. Clifford Thomas, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Pivot News confirmed that the police arrested him and three other journalists who work in the production team of his paper, but that they were later released. He said the police came in four Toyota hilux trucks, and said they had orders from the deputy commissioner of police to stop some newspapers from getting to the newsstand because of suspicion that they were publishing subversive materials against the Akwa Ibom State government.