President Muhammadu Buhari’s blocking of access to Peoples Gazette’s website for publishing various unfavourable stories about his regime shows disregard for fundamental rights, says the U.S. government.

This was contained in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices that chronicled the gross violation of human rights and constant intimidation of the press under Mr Buhari in 2021.

It noted that the managing editor of the newspaper, Samuel Ogundipe, alleged the government had ordered the blocking after the paper in October 2020 criticised the competence of the government. 

“The website remained blocked at year’s end (2021),” thereby violating sections 22 and 39 of the nation’s 1999 constitution, which advocates press freedom.

“The law prohibits arbitrary interference, but authorities reportedly infringed on this right during the year, and at times police entered homes without judicial or other appropriate authorisation,” said the report regarding ongoing violations of human rights in Nigeria. It added that under the guise of “pursuit of corruption cases, law enforcement agencies allegedly carried out searches and arrests without warrants.”

The U.S. government also mentioned NGO Freedom House revealing that “several government agencies purchased spyware that allowed them to monitor cell phone calls, texts, and geolocation.”

“The government blocked websites, including Twitter. In January (2021), the news website Peoples Gazette was blocked by several mobile internet services,” stated the U.S. government. “The editor of the website alleged the government had ordered the blocking after the website in October 2020 criticised the competence of the government.”

The Gazette’s exclusive report on Bolaji Gambari, son of the president’s chief of staff, as the new head of a budding cabal of administration associates inside the presidential villa using his father’s influence, triggered the restriction to The Gazette’s website. 

After several financial offers to pull down the story were rejected by the digital newspaper, Mr Buhari’s regime directed mobile network providers to render the website inaccessible to their subscribers of close to 200 million.

Some of the mobile operators who initially refrained from giving comments later admitted they acted on the written directive of Mr Buhari’s regime.

“Please be advised that the network access restriction for https://peoplesgazette.com is pursuant to the directives of the Nigerian Communications Commission (“Commission”) dated January 26 2021,” MTN’s legal advisers wrote The Gazette’s lawyers in December 2021.

In a letter dated December 9, 2021, 9mobile parroted the same reason for blocking The Gazette’s website.

“Please be informed that the access restriction was as a result of a regulatory directive from the Nigerian Communication Commission ‘NCC’,” said 9mobile’s management.

Calls by several human rights groups like Gatefield, Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and Amnesty International for Mr Buhari’s regime to lift the restriction, fell on deaf ears. 

In January, operatives of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) stormed the head office of The Gazette in Abuja demanding the source of a story that deemed the agency’s director-general, Ahmed Abubakar, intellectually incompetent for the role after failing promotional exams three times.

Although the NIA shied away from contesting the story’s content, operatives demanded to see the newspaper’s editor and the reporter while bearing a letter that threatened “other options” should the journalists fail to cooperate with the spy police.