“He hit me with a gun butt,” Premium Times newspaper reporter Yakubu Mohammed told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), recalling how he was struck by a police officer while reporting on cost-of-living protests in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja on August 1.
Two other officers beat him, seized his phone, and threw him in a police van despite him wearing a “Press” vest and showing them his press identification card.
Mohammed is one of at least 56 journalists who were assaulted or harassed by security forces or unidentified citizens while covering the #EndBadGovernance demonstrations in Nigeria, one of several countries across sub-Saharan Africa that have experienced anti-government protests in recent months.
In a new feature report, CPJ’s Evelyn Okakwu documents recent actions against journalists in Nigeria that are emblematic of the dangers faced by reporters in many African countries during protests.
Last year, CPJ found that more than 40 Nigerian journalists were detained, attacked, or harassed while reporting on presidential and state elections. In 2020, at least a dozen journalists were attacked during the #EndSARS campaign to abolish Nigeria’s brutal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) police unit.
