COUNTER ATTACK: A CHRONICLE OF JOURNALISTS ARRESTED, INCARCERATED UNJUSTLY BY EL RUFAI AS GOVERNOR

On October 12, 2017, Luka Binniyat, who used to work as the Kaduna Bureau Chief of Vanguard Newspapers, regained freedom from incarceration after spending 96 days in prison over a January 24, 2017 report he authored.

The Governor Nasir El-Rufai administration in Kaduna State began prosecuting him in March of that year for breach of public peace, one month after the police opened a case against him over the same story.

‘Five College of Education students killed in Southern Kaduna’, read the headline. The report, published on Vanguard Newspaper, claimed five students of the College of Education, Gidan Waya, Jema’a Local Government Area in the state, were shot dead close to Gidan Waya, when herdsmen waylaid a commercial car taking them to school from Kafanchan.

This story… was false.

Eight years after, Binniyat continues to defend himself as the prosecution attempts to convince the court that he published a report he knew to be false. The veteran journalist argues — “I submitted a story, and then discovered I was misled, then called my editor to drop it, but the story went public anyway. Today, I face the consequences.”

FIJ sat with the journalist in March to discuss the events that led to his legal troubles with the government. He said it was a personal grouse the governor had with him.

“Vanguard did not publish a rebuttal and refused to take the story down after we found out the sources misled us,” Binniyat said. “I begged them to take it down, but they did not. I am only a labourer, so I don’t have rights to any story after I submit it. It is the property of the media house.

“When el-Rufai went to court, he forgave Vanguard but came for me.”

During a telephone interview with FIJ, Eze Anaba, the Vanguard Editor, said when the media outlet discovered the story was false, they engaged several stakeholders who helped plead with el-Rufai.

He said the then-governor agreed to not take legal action against the company but demanded an apology from Binniyat. The reporter declined. Anaba said this move complicated things as el-Rufai insisted on taking legal action against Binniyat.

“If we had published a rebuttal or pulled the story, it would have aided the government’s case against him,” Anaba added.

Binniyat believes things would not have got this far if they had dropped the story like he requested.

HOW THE CONTROVERSIAL STORY CAME TO BE

“Sometime in January 2017, Audu Maikori, the founder of Chocolate City Group, called me to say there was an attack on some College of Education students in the south of Kaduna metropolis. He said the car was ambushed and the people were killed,” Binniyat told FIJ.

He said he spoke with Simon Joseph, Maikori’s driver, who cried and said his brother was killed in the attack. Then, he contacted other sources as well to verify the claim. One of these sources, he said, was Danjuma Laah, the Senator representing Southern Kaduna at the time.

“I asked him, and he said someone informed him about it, and he was trying to reach the police but he had not gotten through to them.

“So, I wrote my story in quotation. I did not write it as an opinion. I attributed the information to the sources.

“I filed it around 2 pm. At about 4 pm, I was able to reach my source. I asked him why he did not give me this information before others did, and he told me it did not happen. I called Anaba, and said he should please drop the story as I could not vouch for the integrity of the story.

“He said he could no hear me, and I should send a text message. I sent the text message. Whether he got it or not, I don’t know, but the story was in the paper the following day. When it got published, Samuel Aruwan, a spokesman for the governor at the time, held three press conferences to say I fabricated a story and lied to incite violence against the government of el-Rufai.

“Of course, I wrote what he said, and my office refused to publish. They also refused to write a retraction. After Aruwan went around to say a lot about me, my paper refused to defend me. In February I was arrested.”

On February 4, 2017, Maikori published a statement apologising to the public and Vanguard Newspaper for misleading them. He said his driver lied to him to extort money out of him for a burial that did not happen.

A week after his apology, the police arrested him in Lagos. He spent 24 hours in custody before he was released. In October that year, he won a fundamental human rights lawsuit against the police and El-Rufai.

Around the same time of Maikori’s arrest, “The police commissioner invited me,” Binniyat said. “He showed me an online version of the story and asked if I knew the story. I said I authored it but did not publish it. I am just a labourer. They did not join Vanguard in the suit. It was only me, a soft target that they took out. That was how I was charged to court for spreading of false news and criminal incitement. I was clamped in jail on February 13, 2017.”

Anaba says Vanguard was joined as a defendant in the suit, and the newspaper helped secure Binniyat’s release. He also said the matter died a natural death afterwards. Binniyat says he still goes to court and spends his money on his defence.

ORDEAL WITH EL-RUFAI

For over 25 years, Binniyat has worked as a journalist. The Southern Kaduna native was on Vanguard Newspaper’s books for 15 years before moving on to become a stringer for some foreign journals.

Prior to his stint with Vanguard, he lived in Abuja as a reporter covering the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd., the National Assembly, and some other federal ministries and their parastatals.

He told FIJ that after the 2011 presidential election which Muhammadu Buhari of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) lost to Goodluck Jonathan, there was chaos in the northern part of the country. Riots erupted in Kaduna State. Buhari’s loyalists were unhappy he lost the election., and as that violence ensued, his company transferred him to the state as the correspondent there left.

“When I came to Kaduna, I discovered that there were a lot of issues in the statd. It was more like two states forced into one,” Binniyat told FIJ. “We have the northern part, which has Hausa/Fulani who are mostly Muslims, and we have half part of the state, which is mainly Christian.

“Fortunately, when Patrick Yakowa was the governor, he was a Christian from the southern part of the state. He came to that position by faith. Shortly after President Musa Yar’Adua died and Jonathan ascended his seat, there was a vacuum. That was how Namadi Sambo who was then governor of Kaduna State was drafted in 2009 to become Vice President. Inadvertently, Yakowa who was Sambo’s deputy, became governor.

“So, I came in 2011 when Yakowa was the governor of the state. There already was a post-presidential election violence in the state. The aggressors burnt houses and looted. Unfortunately, they introduced that violence in the southern part of the state. So, the residents were able to overcome them, and they incurred heavy casualties on their own side.”

He explained that before Yakowa died in a plane crash in 2012, the then-governor was able to bring the violence under control. Binniyat believes the crisis had religious and tribal motivations.

Mukhtar Yero, Yakowa’s deputy, became governor. Three years later, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lost the presidential election and gubernatorial election in Kaduna to the All Progressives Congress (APC). Yero was replaced by Nasir el-Rufai, and Buhari became president.

Binniyat believes several Christians in southern Kaduna were worried the crisis would escalate with a Fulani man at the helm of the state’s affairs, and another heading the country.

About el-Rufai, he said, “He once said whoever kills a Fulani had incurred a debt which no matter the years it would take, the Fulani would come for it. He was also the one who made a blasphemous tweet about the virgin Mary where he alluded to something about Jesus Christ having sex with Mary Magdalene, so when he won that election, a lot of the Christians were worried about what he might do.

“Herdsmen attacks became more frequent. I was saddled with the responsibility of reporting this violence as a pressman, but I was challenged to go the extra mile as a native to know what was happening in my community. So, I had to take some risks, go to the nooks and crannies where my colleagues could not go because journalists have no insurance.

“I began discovering that there were so many villages that were attacked, but these were underreported. I was always having regular reports and news features detailing the government’s failures to protect its citizens mostly from southern Kaduna. Meanwhile, it was a campaign promise el-Rufai made to his constituents.”

Binniyat said el-Rufai did not live up to his promises, and soon, the violence was back.

The journalist later became the spokesman for the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), a group set up to foster the interests of people from the terrorised region of the state. This put him in direct contact with the el-Rufai administration, and there were regular disagreements.

“In 2016, el-Rufai had a press conference where he invited some select-journalists,” Binniyat continued. “He made a shocking revelation there. He said he was able to identify the herdsmen who were invading southern Kaduna communities and killing his citizens, and he traced them to their countries, paid them and pleaded with them not to return.”

Binniyat reported the incident, and it went viral.

He said, “Somehow, my colleagues did not have the courage to use that story. I did, and it became a very big story, and it stirred an outrage in the country. That was one of the things he used against me.

“There was a young journalist then who was with him, who later became commissioner for Internal Security; Samuel Aruwan, who incidentally was under my tutelage. He was one of the persons who was all out to cover what was happening in Southern Kaduna before he joined the government.

“As soon as that story was published, I knew I was a marked man.

“At another event in Kaduna, el-Rufai made an outburst when he was challenged about the composition of his cabinet and people he selected to be given political appointments. He was livid. He said whoever was not happy with his appointments should climb Kufena hill, jump and die.

“I got a video clip of the outing and I wrote. Again, I went into problems with the state government. Aruwan petitioned my office saying the governor did not say ‘And die,’ but I added it to incite the public. The editor asked if I was aware of the petition against me. I told him I wasn’t, so he explained.

“I told him one could not jump from that kind of mountain and not die. The editor agreed and we did not write a retraction.

“I had gained enmity from the government at that time. What I discovered was that the Nigerian press was mismanaging and misinforming the public about the true nature of what was going on in Kaduna.

“It was not farmer/herder clash. What was happening was genocide. A sleeping community was invaded by attackers who set fire to their homes and hacked them when they ran out of their houses. We’ve lived peacefully with these people in the past, but things changed when ideologies were planted in them.”

Binniyat claimed there were several instances Aruwan threatened to come after him for writing against the government, and these preceded his incarceration.

MORE JOURNALISTS FACE ATTACKS

On April 7, an X user, Abiyos Roni, posted the pictures of four journalists and said, “While el-Rufai was fighting Shehu Sani for eight years and now fighting Uba Sani for refusing to be his stooge, these are the journalists el-Rufai arrested and imprisoned for doing their jobs when he was Governor of Kaduna State.”

The post mentions Binniyat, Steven Kefason, Jacob Dickson and Midat Joseph.

The police arrested Joseph on April 19, 2017 on allegations of inciting the public against the government.

At the time, Premium Times newspaper interviewed Sunday Isuwa, his colleague at Leadership newspapers. Isuwa said, “Mr. Joseph was actually arrested over a comment on a Southern Kaduna Victims Support WhatsApp Group.

“Somebody posted on the group calling for protest for the world to know about the killings in Southern Kaduna; Joseph concurred that such protest should be organised.”

After three months of prosecution, a magistrate court set him free on July 31, 2017.

Like Joseph, Jacob Dickson, a reporter with the Authentic News Daily, was arrested on April 28, 2016 and charged with incitement over an April 27, 2016 report detailing how youths pelted el-Rufai.

On May 5 that year, he regained freedom from custody.

STEVEN KEFASON SPENDS 150 DAYS IN DETENTION

Another victim of police harassment and incarceration under the el-Rufai administration is citizen journalist Steven Kefason. He spent 150 days in prison in 2019, eventually securing his freedom on November 4, 2019.

When FIJ caught up with Kefason in March, he detailed how he suffered for sharing updates via X about the crisis in southern Kaduna. For years, he went into hiding, required help, lost money and kept looking over his shoulders.

He told FIJ that at some point after his release, he fled to a neighbouring African country where a kind Nigerian housed him in July 2022.

He flashed back to the events that led him to begin reporting on the incidents in southern Kaduna. He and others felt the media was not documenting what was going on in the region, so they took it upon themselves to document it on Facebook and other social media platforms.

He said he was in Rivers State on May 7, 2019 when he received a phonecall from a policeman who was a friend of his. This policeman arrived in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital city, on invitation from the police formation the state. Later on, this policeman came to where Kefason was and identified him.

The police force used this friend of his to find him.

“They kept me in a cell, made me write a statement, and showed me a bulky petition against me, ” Kefason told FIJ. “Nobody knew I was arrested, but I was able to make a phone call through a policewoman. That call saved my life.”

Soon, news of his arrest became public. The next day, the police took him by road from Rivers to Kaduna. He had no food or water for a couple of days.

Chief amongst the allegations against him was incitement, the same allegation made against the other journalists. The police kept him in a detention facility used by the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). He spent a weekend there with suspected felons.

A magistrate granted him bail, and he went back to Rivers state, but the police began calling his sureties to fetch him. “What we heard was that the petitioners were angry that a magistrate granted me bail,” Kefason told FIJ.

When he returned to Kaduna, the police put him before a different magistrate and filed new charges. They took his phone, and he never saw the device again. The police added cyberstalking to the charge sheet, and the magistrate could not grant him bail as the allegation was outside his jurisdiction. This was how his journey to prison began.

Justice Mairo Mohammed of the Kaduna High Court granted him bail after the prosecution failed to diligently prosecute the matter.

Between 2016 and 2019, the el-Rufai administration detained at least four journalists for reporting on issues in Southern Kaduna.

FIJ called Muyiwa Adekeye, El-Rufai’s spokesman, several times, but he did not take any of the calls. FIJ also called el-Rufai’s known phone numbers but they were unreachable. The newspaper dialed Aruwan’s number for several months, but it was unreachable.

 

FIJ