PUNCH Petitions IGP Over Seizure Of Correspondent’s Phone

The PUNCH Newspaper has petitioned the Inspector-General of Police, Alhaji Usman Alkali Baba, over the attack on PUNCH correspondent, Toni Ufor, by some policemen attached to the Special Fraud Unit (SFU) on Wednesday.

The officers also seized Ufor’s phone and Identity card.

Editor of The PUNCH Ademola Oni in the petition described that action as unwarranted, provocative, uncivilised, crude and barbaric.

Ufoh, Oni said, was assigned to cover the case of some tenants, who allegedly defrauded by a developer, Adewale Tunde, at the Milverton Office of the SFU in Ikoyi.

He said: “The reporter’s offence was that he had the audacity to conduct interviews with the victims allegedly defrauded by the developer in front of the premises of the Unit.

“The power-drunk policemen descended on the helpless reporter, accusing him of recording the SFU office.

“After he was made to identify himself as a journalist, the overzealous policemen arrested the reporter, deleted all the interviews he had conducted on his telephone set and went ahead to seize the set and confiscated his ID card.

“These cops equally threatened to lock up the journalist when he demanded the return of his set and card which are his lawful property.

“The intervention of one of the crime reporters on the Metro Desk of the newspaper failed to assuage the flaming impunity of these policemen, who ensured they frustrated the coverage of the assignment for reasons best known to them.”

According to Oni, attacks on PUNCH reporters by officers of the Nigerian Police Force have become a recurring decimal, from Lagos to Imo, from Enugu to Kaduna in the recent past.

“I have the authority of the management of PUNCH Nigeria Limited to request that you use your good offices to direct that the errant policemen return the telephone set and the ID card of Ufor to him at the corporate head office of PUNCH Nigeria Limited, PUNCH Place, along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway in Magboro before 6pm December 30, to ensure fairness.

“We also demand that these overzealous policemen be punished for taking the laws into their hands by attacking an innocent Nigerian, obstructing a journalist from carrying out his lawful duty, and dragging the image of the Force in the mud through their crudeness and brazen display of their self-imposed power,” he wrote.