Publisher Receives Threat After Revealing Former Speaker’s Role In Alleged Contract Scam
Nigeria's former speaker of the House of Representatives Yakubu Dogara is alleged to have threatened a journalist after a report detailing his role in a N1 Billion Constituency Project.
Haruna Mohammed, the Wikki Times Publisher, has received a threat after an investigative report revealed how, Yakubu Dogara, the former Speaker of Nigerian House of Representatives and Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) squandered N1 billion meant for the rehabilitation of school projects in Bauchi-South Federal Constituency, Northeast Nigeria.
Mohammed said that he got “a call from his younger brother informing him that some unknown men had visited, demanding to know his whereabouts.”
When the men learned that Mohammed had travelled, they asked his brother if he knew that his elder brother had published a ‘damaging’ story.
“They told him to tell me that since I have done my own; I should wait for their own,” Mohammed said.
The story that initiated the visit revealed how three years before, UBEC released N97 million to three companies for the building of classrooms in the federal constituency represented by Dogara in Bauchi State but the money was not put to use.
Before the ‘strange visit,’ a group under the banner, Dogara Media Support Team had released a statement in an attempt to dismiss the Wikki Times report.
The latest threat to the publisher is coming just three months after a similar threat was issued to him following an investigation which detailed how Makkah Eye Clinic, owned by Saudi Arabia Albasar International Foundation, deviated from its creed of affordable healthcare and resorted to charging clients three times the amount in similar private institutions.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has reported that Nigeria is one of the countries where journalists are unsafe. According to CPJ, between 1992 to 2021, at least 24 Nigerian journalists have either died or got missing while doing their jobs.
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