Letters from Stockholm — by Kio Amachree
There is a moment in the life of every failing government when it stops trying to persuade its citizens and starts trying to frighten them. Nigeria passed that moment some time ago. What follows is not one scandal or one arrest. It is a pattern — and patterns, unlike accidents, reveal intention.
I write from Stockholm, under the protection of Swedish press freedom, and I write plainly: the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has presided over a systematic abuse of power that touches the press, the opposition, the courts, and the treasury. What follows are documented facts, published allegations, and the questions they demand. Where matters remain allegations, I say so. Where they are established fact, I say that too. The reader may judge.
*First, the journalists*
The Committee to Protect Journalists — no partisan outfit, but the world’s foremost press-freedom monitor — has documented at least 91 journalists arrested, assaulted, or harassed since Tinubu took office on 29 May 2023, across twelve states and the Federal Capital Territory. When the administration disputed this, CPJ’s Africa Director accused it of trying to erase the abuses from public memory. A journalist on the receiving end put it more memorably: when this government says the sky is blue, go outside and check.
Consider what these numbers mean in flesh and blood. Segun Olatunji, editor of FirstNews, taken from his Lagos home in March 2024 by some fifteen armed men in unmarked vans — soldiers, in a democracy, arresting an editor — and held incommunicado for fourteen days. His offence? A story alleging misuse of public funds by the President’s Chief of Staff. Daniel Ojukwu of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, abducted in Lagos, flown to Abuja, held for ten days under a cybercrime law that observers say has become the regime’s favourite muzzle. Madu Onuorah of Globalupfront, seized at his Abuja home in front of his wife and children, his phones confiscated, his lawyer kept away. Adejuwon Soyinka of The Conversation Africa, detained by the secret police at Lagos airport, his passport confiscated as a “bail condition” — for offences no agency would even name.
The Information Minister assures us no journalist has been jailed for “responsible journalism.” Note the qualifier. Governments that jail journalists always insist the journalism was irresponsible. General Abacha said the same.
*Second, the dissidents*
Nnamdi Kanu has been in the custody of the Department of State Services since June 2021, held on after a Court of Appeal ordered the charges dropped in 2022 — an order the state litigated its way around. Whatever one thinks of Kanu’s politics, indefinite detention is not justice; it is hostage-taking with a docket number.
And when Nigerians marched peacefully in October 2025 to say so, what did they meet? Live ammunition and tear gas in the streets of Abuja, by press accounts. The police arrested Kanu’s lawyer, Aloy Ejimakor — arresting a man’s lawyer for advocating for his client is the signature of a police state. They arrested his brother, Emmanuel Kanu. They arrested Omoyele Sowore, a former presidential candidate, inside the premises of the Federal High Court itself — a desecration of the one space where a citizen is supposed to be safe from the executive’s hand — and held him at the detention facility Nigerians know grimly as the Abattoir. Eleven protesters were remanded in Kuje Prison for the crime of assembly. Meanwhile, the same President extends pardons to convicted criminals. The message could not be clearer: mercy for the connected, manacles for the conscientious.
*Third, the courts*
I will be precise here, because precision is what separates journalism from propaganda. The Presidential Election Petition Court and a unanimous seven-justice Supreme Court panel upheld the 2023 election. Those judgments are public record, and I accuse no individual justice of anything. But I will quote the most damning witness available on the state of the Nigerian judiciary: President Bola Tinubu himself, who told the assembled judges of Nigeria’s superior courts in 2025 that public trust in the justice system has weakened amid perceptions of corruption, and that “justice must never be for sale.” When the chief beneficiary of the judiciary’s most consequential modern rulings feels compelled to remind judges that justice is not for sale, the nation is entitled to ask why the reminder was necessary. Senior lawyers have gone further, alleging publicly that the independence of the electoral commission, the judiciary, and the security agencies has been systematically compromised in the executive’s favour. These are allegations, not verdicts — but they are allegations this administration has never answered with anything but indignation.
*Fourth, the money*
Abuse of power is never only about force; it is about what the force protects. Under this administration, Nigerians have watched: a Humanitarian Affairs ministry engulfed by allegations running from hundreds of millions to tens of billions of naira; refinery rehabilitation spending measured in billions of dollars with no working refineries to show for it; budget padding that civil-society analysts have measured in trillions; approximately thirteen billion dollars in reported public contracts flowing toward a single foreign-linked business network whose principal was then draped in one of Nigeria’s highest national honours; and a £746 million British export guarantee attached to the same network, waved through without the beneficial-ownership transparency any serious democracy would demand. Allegations, again — but allegations of this scale, met with this much silence, become their own indictment.
And while the treasury bled, where was the President? On a three-week European holiday, having never transmitted the constitutionally required Section 145 letter handing power to his deputy — leaving 220 million people to guess who, precisely, was governing them.
*The pattern, named*
Put it together. A press harassed into caution. An opposition met with tear gas and prison. A judiciary whose independence its own head of state feels obliged to defend from suspicion. A treasury haemorrhaging into politically connected hands. Each element enables the others: the journalists who would expose the contracts are detained; the protesters who would object are remanded; the courts that would restrain are under a cloud the President himself acknowledges. This is not a series of unfortunate events. It is architecture.
*The Kio Solution*
I do not write to despair; I write to demand. Five things, none radical, all constitutional:
One. Immediate release of every journalist, protester, and lawyer detained for speech or assembly, and repeal of the cybercrime provisions used to criminalise reporting.
Two. Unconditional compliance with court orders — beginning with the judicial findings in Nnamdi Kanu’s favour that the state has spent years evading.
Three. A forensic, independently supervised audit of the major contract awards of this administration, with full publication of the agreements and their beneficial owners.
Four. Transmission of the Section 145 letter every single time the President leaves the seat of power — the Constitution is not a suggestion.
Five. A lawful reckoning — épuration légale, not mob justice — for every official, of any party, whom evidence implicates. Investigation, due process, prosecution where warranted, recovery of what was taken.
History is patient but it is not amnesiac. The editors of tomorrow will write freely about the men who jailed the editors of today. The lawyers of tomorrow will prosecute, lawfully and calmly, the men who arrested the lawyers of today. Power passes. Records remain. I am keeping mine.
*Nigeria belongs to Nigerians*
Kio Amachree writes from Stockholm. This article relies on published reports by the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Press Institute, the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, Premium Times, Vanguard, The Guardian Nigeria, Sahara Reporters and others. Matters described as allegations remain allegations; no assertion of criminal guilt is made against any person save where established by a court of competent jurisdiction.
