OMPAN condemns Journalist detention by the Nigeria Police

Online Media Practitioners Association of Nigeria has condemned in strong terms the arrest of Samuel Ogundipe of PremiumTimes, and his continued detention by the Nigerian police.

He was arrested for refusing to give up his sources, this the association sees as a very strange occurrence,  that in a country that claims to be practicing democracy, a member of the fourth realm can be arrested and detained by the police without provocation.

The association however called for the immediate release as well as unfreezing of samuel Ogundipe of PremiumTimes account.

In a statement signed by the Public Relation Officer of the association,    Ismaila Yahaya Kana, OMPAN wonders why only Samuel Ogundipe was singled out for this unlawful, evil and undemocratic arrest when so many online and print media houses carried the story in question.

According to the statement " The fact that Mr Samuel Ogundipe was exercising his constitutionally protected right as a journalist can never be overemphasized and not even the Nigerian police has the power to take that away from him.

"OMPAN wants to stress that Mr Samuel Ogundipe was well within his rights to report the said letter and should not be held responsible for the inability of the Nigerian Police to manage its confidentiality or put a tight lid on all the sensitive documents it wants to keep away from the public".

"OMPAN wants to state very clearly that Nigerians can no longer tolerate this Military Junta style that the police is adopting to silence reporters and starting with the immediate and unconditional release of Samuel Ogundipe, the police must desist from further embarrassing Nigeria in the eye of the international community".

"OMPAN recalls how SARS officers arrested, molested and compelled its members in Owerri to pay a huge bribe before matching them to an ATM to withdraw the bribe money or risk being implicated to a crime. But for the resourcefulness of the Journalists in procuring incontrovertible pictorial evidence of that event, they probably would have been held in similar fashion as Samuel Ogundipe".

"The Nigerian police has already inflicted a great deal of pain on innocent and law abiding Nigerians already and this must stop".

"This is unacceptable. The police must as a matter urgency retrace its footsteps and toe the path of civility and service to humanity as is commensurate with their profession the world over".