Stop Reporting DSS Activities, HURIWA Charge Media

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria has advised media outlets in the country to stop reporting the activities of the Department of State Services.

The civil rights advocacy group stated that the service deliberately “defecated on the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) by their disgraceful resort to illegality and illogicality in clear violations of subsisting and binding Orders of Competent Courts of law in their wilful failures to release Omoyele SOWORE and Olawale Bakare from illegal detention days after the Federal High Court ordered their immediate release.”

Recall that DSS had claimed that the convener of the RevoutionNow Movement, Omoyele Sowore, might be knocked down by a car if he was released.

The service has insisted that it would only release the publisher of Sahara Reporters to his sureties.

HURIWA, however, charged the media to stop using what it termed “disjointed and illogical statements” from DSS.

The group in a statement through its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, said such disjointed and illogical statements by DSS graphically paints Nigeria like a Banana republic or a failed state in the eyes of the international community.

He said, “The media should stop using the disjointed and illogical statements emanating from State Security Services which graphically paints Nigeria like a Banana republic or a failed state in the eyes of the international community.”

“The varying weird explanations of these violations of the constitutional rights of citizens SOWORE and Bakare and many others languishing in solitary confinement held by the DSS as against binding bail orders from the Federal High Courts amounts to deliberate misinformation and the spreading of fake news and should not be encouraged by the Nigerian media.”

“If the officers of DSS have lost their collective sense of shame please the media should stop allowing themselves to be used by DSS or SSS to insult and assault our sensibilities”.