The Department of State Services (DSS) has disclosed their intention to arrest ‘Fisayo Soyombo, founder and editor-in-chief of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) ”, FIJ revealed.
According to a security source who was speaking with FIJ on Wednesday, Soyombo will be arrested by the DSS “any moment from now, as soon his whereabouts can be traced”.
FIJ could not immediately establish why the DSS would be after Soyombo, or if it is because of his work as an investigative/undercover reporter, as a social critic on microblogging platform X or as the founder of FIJ, an online newspaper that exposes injustice and holds the government to account.
Soyombo’s recent criticisms on X often feature the disrepute to which the DSS has fallen, being a state security service that has now become a tool for hounding journalists and activists.
Meanwhile, FIJ itself continues to execute the kind of critical reporting that the Bola Tinubu administration has proven to be unable to tolerate.
Only on Wednesday, FIJ reported how Oluremi Tinubu, Nigeria’s first lady, received N700 million from the state house to purchase dollars for foreign trips between November and March. This is despite claiming at an event before Tinubu’s inauguration in 2023 that her family was blessed and they did not need Nigeria’s wealth.
However, it is the first time Soyombo will be on the radar of the DSS, his recent detentions by the security forces having been with the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Monitoring Unit in December 2021 and the Nigeria Police Force National Cyber Crime Centre (NPF-NCCC) in August 2024. In both cases, he willingly honoured police invitations but he was detained and subsequently released on bail.
Soyombo’s recent investigations include an undercover investigation on smuggling and gunrunning titled ‘Undercover As A Smuggler’, which he then followed up with a series of ‘good morning’ tweets.
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