Chinedu Offoaro

December 14, 2007

His Excellency Umaru Musa Yar'Adua
President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
C/o The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
3519 International Court NW
Washington, D.C. 20008

Via facsimile: (202) 362-6552

Mr. President,

The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes your recent directive to Nigeria's federal police to renew investigations into all unresolved criminal cases, particularly assassinations. As an organization of journalists dedicated to defending our colleagues worldwide, we would like to draw your attention to a pattern of impunity in the violent murders and disappearances of at least five Nigerian journalists since 1986.

New York, August 27, 2001—CPJ urges former Nigerian military dictator Gen. Ibrahim Babangida to testify before the Nigerian Human Rights Violations Investigations Commission about his alleged responsibility for the 1986 murder of prominent journalist Dele Giwa.

"It is time to solve the 15-year mystery of Dele Giwa's murder," said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper. "We call on General Babangida to confront the allegations implicating him in Giwa's death."

PRESIDENT OLUSEGUN OBASANJO HAS REPEATEDLY PRAISED NIGERIAN JOURNALISTS for their role in bringing down successive military dictators, but Nigeria's return to democracy has not relieved journalists of legal restrictions or of the hostility they face from the political class.

Like much of the country, the press was caught up in an often-turbulent national debate last year over the adoption of an Islamic legal system, known as sharia, by nine Nigerian states. Ahmed Sani, governor of Zamfara State, charged that Nigerian press coverage of the issue showed that local journalists were a "force of destruction" bent on "pitting citizens against one another." Sani had earlier ordered the official Zamfara State Radio not to air anti-sharia news items. In March, he ordered security agents to seize all copies of three daily newspapers, The Nigerian Tribune, The Vanguard, and The Guardian, because they contained reports on sharia.