OrderPaper Publisher Raises Alarm Over Threats From Politician

The publisher of OrderPaper Nigeria, Mr. Oke Epia, has raised an alarm over threats to his life and those of his colleagues by a former member of the House of Representatives, Tony Nwulu.

Nwulu sponsored the not-too-young-to-run bill that was signed into law by President Muhammadu Buhari last year.

Mr. Epia in a terse statement on Friday in Abuja, alleged that he and other journalists in the media organization have received threat calls directly from Nwulu and strange calls and text messages from persons some of whom refused to identify themselves.

He said the strange encounters with the politician started on July 21, 2019 when the former lawmaker posted “unwarranted, grave and unsubstantiated allegations of extortion and blackmail against the organization on social media over a publication he disagreed with. The publication contained an objective assessment of his records in parliament.”

According to Mr. Epia, following the claims by the former lawmaker on social media, OrderPaper wrote a letter to the politician asking for evidence to back up the claims in his posts which “are wild, tactless, libelous and absolutely unbecoming of someone who has held such high office as a federal legislator.”

“Mr. Nwulu went on a binge of further verbal attacks and this time was calling my colleagues and issuing threats with a promise to hunt us down at all costs.

“Given the wave of attacks against journalists in recent times, we have decided to bring this matter to the public domain and let the world know that should anything untoward happen to me or any of our colleagues or the media establishment itself, Mr. Nwulu should be held responsible,” Epia stated.

The publisher stressed that “when we now have someone saying that he will hunt us down, we need to make the world aware even though we have initiated appropriated steps to seek legal protection and redress both for ourselves and the reputation of our organization. And for the records, we stand by our story and insist that records available since the publication have further corroborated our reportage.”

Press Attack Tracker which monitors attacks against journalists in the country, said at least 36 Nigerian journalists were attacked between January and July this year.