A civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has called for a deliberate media “blackout” against the activities of the Department of State Services, DSS.
HURIWA alleged that DSS 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.”
The secret police which has refused to release Omoyele Sowore, convener of the RevolutionNow Movement, had a few days claimed he may be knocked down by a vehicle if released to protesters demanding his freedom.
DSS had reiterated that it would only released Sowore to his sureties.
However, the right group charged the media to stop using what it termed “disjointed and illogical statements” from DSS.
A statement by 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.
The statement reads: “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 “.