The Department of State Services (DSS) has declared the report that it is laying siege to Premium Times is false.
According to a statement by the Public Relations Officer of the DSS, Dr Peter Afunanya, as reported by The Nation, the report that the phones of one of the staff of the media organisation was hacked by them was also untrue.
He described them as unfounded and needless sensationalism.
The statement reads: “The report that the DSS is laying siege on Premium Times and has hacked the phones of one of its staff is false in its entirety. It is unfounded and just a needless sensationalism.
“There is no such operation at the moment by the Service targeted at the Premium Times, its Editor or staff. If there is any need for the DSS to discharge its duty, it sure has to do that with every sense of decency and in accordance with laid down procedures.
“Now, the Service is not anywhere near the news agency. Therefore, the report should be disregarded. It is fake news.”
Earlier, in a story titled “DSS agents stake out Premium Times office, visit editor’s residence”, The Guardian had reported a siege, illustrated with photograph, by DSS operatives on the office of the newspaper.
Two unmarked pickup vans packed close to the office of Premium Times in Abuja on Sunday. PHOTO: TWITTER/ICIR
The Guardian had reported that the “secret police on Sunday visited the home of the editor of Premium Times, Musikilu Mojeed, in their quest to pry information from one of the newspaper’s reporters.”
It reported: “The two agents, who visited Mojeed’s residence, arrived and left in a Toyota Camry car.
DSS is looking to extract the source of a secret memo first published by the newspaper. The memo was written by the national security adviser Babagana Monguno to service chiefs, warning them against taking orders from President Muhammadu Buhari’s chief of staff Abba Kyari.
Monguno copied Buhari, minister of interior Rauf Aregbesola and minister of foreign affairs Geoffrey Onyeama.
“They visited his house this morning but his wife did not allow them in,” Premium Times’s managing editor Idris Akinbanjo told The Guardian on Sunday.
He said the editor’s wife Haulat Mojeed insisted she would not allow them in except if the husband, who is currently out of Nigeria, says so.
The DSS operatives, however, retreated when she alerted her neighbours to their presence.
Akinbanjo also said two unmarked pickup vans, suspected to be those of the secret police, are parked near Premium Times office in Abuja.
Premium Times’s Samuel Ogundipe, who broke the news about a rift between Monguno and Kyari, published the memo in his story.
He has since gone into hiding and his email and WhatsApp hacked into allegedly by the DSS. Akinbajo said the DSS has not officially written to them to demand the source of the memo.
In his report, Ogundipe detailed how Monguno cautioned all the service chiefs against taking orders from Kyari, whom he (Monguno) accused in a memo addressed to Buhari of interfering in security matters.
“You are reminded that the Chief of Staff to the President is not a presiding head of security, neither is he sworn to an oath of defending the country,” Monguno said in the leaked memo.
A source close to the newspaper said what the DSS is doing “is nothing short of harassment.”
“We find it extremely disturbing that Nigerian Government through the DSS is moving to arrest Samuel Ogundipe over leaked NSA’s letter on Abba Kyari,” a civil rights organisation EiE said.
“This campaign to harass, intimidate and silence journalists violates the core principles of democracy.”
The Nation/The Guardian
