July 1995 was not a good time to be a journalist, or a dissident, in General Sani Abacha’s Nigeria. MKO Abiola had been detained for over a year, Ken Saro-Wiwa was on trial, and four journalists had been arrested over an alleged coup plot.

With the country on edge, some men claiming to be employees of Julius Berger construction company—responsible for many choice contracts in building Nigeria’s new capital—entered the International Press Centre in Abuja. This building, home to many journalists and representatives of different media outlets, is the place to go for anyone seeking attention or coverage for anything.

They soon set their eyes on a journalist known for his independence and, frankly, stubbornness. Alex Kabba was a former staff writer for Newswatch, the famous investigative publication co-founded by Dele Giwa, and the Abuja Bureau chief for The News, P.M. News and Tempo—all owned by Independent Communications Network Limited. He was also very well-known, as were other journalists at the time, for defying the Abacha regime and reporting on a variety of incidents.

Kabba would be the right fit because Julius Berger was a known beneficiary of the government of the day and would likely gain government protection. And he would not care. This was the man who had spent eight days in detention in 1994 over a story he wrote that accused Mohammed Bello, then Chief Justice of Nigeria, of receiving a car gift from General Ibrahim Babangida, a former head of state. He had also been horsewhipped inside a police station over how he reported a local crisis involving a traditional ruler.

If you wanted attention and someone who was prepared to go toe to toe with the establishment, you could do few better than Alex Kabba.

But you don't survive that long and keep your sources, again as a journalist in Abacha's Nigeria, without being observant. And, very quickly, he realised that all was not as it seemed. The Julius Berger men identified him by name and knew his Peugeot car, which they could only have noted from tailing him.

Kabba insisted they had the wrong man. But sometimes, when someone is trying to send a message, the last is usually the most effective. One of the men simply pulled out a gun and made it clear. These were undercover agents. Kabba had clearly annoyed someone very powerful.

A fellow journalist who saw the developing disturbance approached them to remind the officer he was waving a gun in a place considered a haven for the media. Other journalists circled them and created a scene. Outnumbered, the men retreated outside to a truck filled with other security agents. But the chaos gave Kabba enough time to go around the back of the building, jump over the fence, and flee in a cab, scared for his life.

He was familiar with the police, from the many times they had arrested him, but something felt different this time. After escaping Abuja, he contacted a publisher friend who informed him he was being hunted in Lagos, too. Idamodu Sule, chairman of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), confirmed his worst fears when he told him the Commissioner of Police claimed he did not send officers to arrest him. The orders came from Aso Rock, Nigeria's seat of power.

Alex Kabba knew exactly why General Sani Abacha's regime had marked him.

Disappearing Sallah Gifts

Before that leap off the high fence of the IPC, Kabba was the State House correspondent for The News and P.M. News and did most of his reporting from Aso Rock. When he became a main fixture in the Abuja scene, in 1992, Abacha was then chief of defence staff, under the General Ibrahim Babangida regime.

Abacha is often seen as the archetypal Nigerian dictator, but there's an interesting reason why—he was in a good position to study and learn how to be so. He had been involved in a majority of the country's successful military coups and served as the chief of army staff between 1985 and 1990.

When he took over power in a coup in November 1993, Kabba thought many members of the press did not fear the implications enough. But unlike the Babangida regime, it was quickly clear that the new regime was not as open to, or outrightly care enough about, listening to the public's views.

Abacha was not a fan of anyone who did not praise-sing him. Two years into his regime, he had jailed hundreds of activists, journalists and politicians who did not sing from his hymn sheet. In 1995, the regime cracked down very hard on an attempted coup that was reportedly scheduled to be executed in March. Commonly referred to as a "phantom coup," many historians still consider it a ruse by the Abacha regime to take out critical voices upsetting his military ranks.

The regime detained dozens of serving military officers and charged them with treason before a secret tribunal. Prominent former military officers like Olusegun Obasanjo, a former head of state, and Shehu Musa Yar'Adua, a retired major general, were imprisoned over the plot. For Abacha, it was the perfect opportunity to show everyone who was in charge. But he still could not sleep with two eyes closed, because the press swarmed over the coup story, picking holes, and unrelenting in reporting it to the public. So he went after them.

His major enforcer was Hamza Al-Mustapha, his chief security officer and a man who soon became the face of the regime when Abacha withdrew from the public. The first and only time he met the young major, Kabba remembered thinking he looked harmless, but the encounter happened during the regime's early days. His troubles started soon after.

The regime revoked his State House credentials after he wrote a story in 1994 alleging that the then Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Aminu Saleh, was land-grabbing in the capital city. But the revocation did not stop him from publishing stories that got the regime's attention.

Earlier that July 1995, he stumbled on a memo that showed Al-Mustafa had written to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) requesting the release of ₦32 million—approximately ₦2.7 billion in 2024, adjusting for inflation—to disburse as Sallah gifts to Abacha’s friends. His investigation led him to believe Al-Mustapha and the National Security Adviser (NSA), Ismaila Gwarzo, diverted the funds for private means. He published the story on The News and all hell broke loose. As Abacha’s right-hand man, Al-Mustapha was a powerful figure in the regime, and pissing him off invited ugly consequences.

Concerned that he would not get fair treatment if captured, Kabba had only one choice left: embark on a journey many anti-Abacha critics did in the 1990s. He escaped to Cotonou in Benin Republic—he disclosed years later that a military officer helped him—and ended up in the United States, to start a new life in exile.

As far as the stories of journalists went under Abacha, he was one of the lucky ones.

"Press Freedom Not Allowed"

In May 1995, officers of the State Security Services (SSS) arrested Kunle Ajibade over a story in The News which reported that an army panel had cleared some coup suspects. The regime wanted him to disclose the source of the story, but he could not. Ajibade was the op-ed editor for A.M. News, and unaffiliated with the story, but this did not matter to the regime. He was secretly charged before Brigadier-General Patrick Aziza's Special Military Tribunal for being an accessory after the fact of treason. The tribunal convicted and sentenced him to life imprisonment after a trial that lasted less than an hour. The judgement could not be appealed.

As shocking as Ajibade’s treatment was, he had company. Before his nightmare experience started, Abacha's security forces arrested George Mbah, a senior assistant editor of TELL over the publication's story that explored an army officer's controversial death. The tribunal sentenced him on the same charge as Ajibade: an accessory after the fact of treason.

Christy Anyanwu, the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Sunday Magazine, and Ben Charles Obi, editor of Weekend Classique met the same fate: imprisoned for reporting on the failed coup in ways that did not meet Abacha's approval.

The regime frequently targeted editors of major newspapers and magazines and detained them without due process. Journalists who did not face secret trials under Abacha disappeared. Bagauda Kaltho, a senior correspondent for The News in Kaduna disappeared in March 1996, believed to have been secretly executed by security agents. He had written many stories about the March 1995 coup and the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) considered him a person of interest. Two years later, the police force attempted to frame him as the mastermind who died in the 1996 bombing of the Durbar Hotel in Kaduna.

The Abacha regime frequently harassed, arrested, and detained journalists for reporting critical stories deemed bad for his image, tagging them as false. The main goal was to control the narrative and manage his negative international image. But the regime’s campaign of terror against the press did not deter journalists from picking up the mantle from where the last terrorised journalist left off. It was the same spirit of civil disobedience he desperately hoped to kill when he executed the Ogoni Nine for protesting the injustice in the Niger Delta.

It did not matter that Kabba eventually fled the country and later started a new publication, a tabloid named African Abroad, for a different audience; many more—like Kaltho—stood in the gap to ensure accountability from a government more accustomed to the shadows.

Nigerian Journalism Is Still Dangerous

General Sani Abacha’s regime ended with his sudden mysterious death 26 years ago, but the legacy of his repression of the media continues to thrive in some form.

The 2024 World Press Freedom Index identifies Nigeria as "one of West Africa's most dangerous and difficult countries for journalists, who are regularly monitored, attacked and arbitrarily arrested."

The index is produced by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and monitors the freedom of journalists and media in 180 countries and territories. The index closely examines the ability of journalists to disseminate news without undue interference that also threatens their safety. Nigeria finished in 112th place, 26 places below military-controlled Burkina Faso.

The poor finish reflects the experiences of Nigerian journalists since the country returned to democratic rule in 1999. This year alone, around a dozen journalists have been harassed, arrested and detained under the Cybercrimes Act which critics have condemned for violating press freedom. Security agencies have constantly deployed the legislation to persecute journalists and threaten the work they do in the public interest.

One of the most recent examples that captured national attention involved the arrest and secret detention of Daniel Ojukwu, a journalist with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) in May 2024. His alleged crime was the investigative report he published about a federal government official who authorised the payment of ₦147.1 million into the bank account of a restaurant to execute a construction contract in Lagos. The police only admitted having him in custody after he was reported missing—he spent over a week in custody before he regained his freedom on bail.

Months later, the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) questioned Fisayo Soyombo, the founding editor of Ojukwu's FIJ, over the same story, and other investigations the publication conducted in the past with the government and public institutions in its crosshairs.

In November, the Nigerian Army arrested Soyombo while he was conducting an undercover investigation at an illegal oil bunkering site in Rivers State. The military did not disclose his arrest until FIJ raised an alarm about his detention, leading to his immediate release.

As the people's voice, the press is in constant danger of repression. By exposing government inadequacies, journalists are attacked and hunted, making them one of the last lines of defence against dangerous corruption of power and rampant impunity.

This is why the most arrested journalist at every point in Nigerian history is the one exposing political and institutional failures that harm the nation's better interests.

The powerful will always do their best to harass, maim, arrest, detain, imprison and even kill the spirit that exists in the voice of the media. The goal is always to terrorise the press into silence and sustain a culture that only serves personal interests.

Perhaps the biggest regret is that despite the brave battles fought by the Alex Kabbas, Chris Anyanwus and Bagauda Kalthos, many like them, decades later, continue to draw the ire of Nigerian governments simply for doing their job.

But if there is any one useful lesson from the past about how to deal with repression, Nigerian journalists know to simply never give up the power of their voice.