Unknown armed men raided the Abuja office of one of Nigeria’s leading media outlets, THIS DAYin the early hours of Thursday.
The gunmen, who were confirmed to number around nine, arrived at the company’s premises in the Jabi district at around 3 am and assaulted some of the production staff and private security guards on duty.
Broadcasting the story, the newspaper’s Abuja bureau chief, Iyobosa Uwugiaren Iyobosa, told PREMIUM TIMES that the gunmen entered the building via the route they came when the organization was attacked about 10 years ago.
In a twin attack, the newspaper’s offices in Abuja and Kaduna were bombed by suicide bombers on April 26, 2012, killing 11 people and destroying the newspaper’s multi-million dollar holdings.
“The same route that they passed in 2012 was the same route that they passed on Thursday to enter the compound. For about 45 minutes, they were on the premises, holding everyone for ransom.
“The people they met were the production staff, the ones who were preparing the newspapers for circulation that morning. They asked everyone to lie down and threatened to kill them if they alerted the police.
“They went by the same route, they did not take anything but according to our private guard, they said that (the gunmen) threatened to return,” Uwugiaren told this newspaper on Friday.
READ ALSO: Armed men kidnap a teacher, four others – Police
While the bureau chief was unable to attribute the raid to the weight of the paper’s commitments of late, he completely dismissed the police explanation that it was simply a robbery incident.
He said he couldn’t precisely link the raid to any of the paper’s political enemies or who he might have offended in his story updates.
“We have reported the case to the Utako police for investigation, but from what the police were trying to say, they claimed it was just an armed robbery without trying to investigate the matter,” Iyobosa said with disgust.
He argued that if the incident was indeed an armed robbery, the gunmen would not have walked away without taking anything during the raid and harassment of newspaper employees.