A journalist, Fisayo Soyombo, has been reportedly threatened over a series of reports he did exposing the rots in the police and the country’s prisons service.
A close friend of the journalist, who spoke to The PUNCH on Wednesday, said Soyombo had vacated his apartment for security reasons.
Soyombo had gone undercover to reveal how policemen from the Pedro Police Station extorted money from suspects and their families, including framing residents for offences they did not commit.
The journalist, who also spent eight days in Ikoyi prison, also showed how drug abuse, sodomy, bribery, and pimping had become the order of the day in the prison.
After the second report, Soyombo went into hiding after it was alleged that the prison service planned to prosecute him under its laws.
A close friend of the journalist told The PUNCH that the reporter had gone into hiding.
“A particular telephone number has been calling him. Whenever he calls it back, the line becomes unreachable. It appears they are monitoring his movement.
“He was told while in prison that if his story was published, he could be assassinated because some of those implicated officials had spent over 25 years in service and they could not watch him destroy their career because they collected N500 or N1,000 as a bribe.
“One of those implicated has just two to three years remaining in service,” the friend said.
Some Nigerians, including Twitter influencers, had taken to the social media to call for Soyombo’s protection, saying he deserved commendation and not prosecution.
The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Bala Elkana, said he was not aware of any plan to arrest the journalist, adding that the force headquarters had already started investigating the issues raised in the report.
The spokesperson for the Nigerian Correctional Service (formerly Nigeria Prisons Service), Francis Enobore, laughed off the allegation that the service planned to arrest Soyombo.
He said the government agency did not have such power and could not contemplate it.
Enobore said, “We have a tradition of partnering with journalists. We work hand in hand with reporters because without them to help us identify areas and gaps, we will not be at our best. So, why are we now going to be chasing journalists for arrests, when we also rely on them to disseminate our good work?
“It is not in our character and we will never do such. There is nothing that he has written that will warrant us running after him.”
