OGUN State correspondent, Punch
Nigeria Limited, Mr. Segun Olatunji, has given an account of how the Chairman,
Correspondent Chapel of Nigerian Union of Journalists in Ogun State, Mr.
Kehinde Akinyemi, led him to the office of the State Security Service without
telling him what the mission was all about.
Olatunji said, “At exactly 8.04am on
Monday, the Chairman of the Correspondent Chapel of the Ogun State Council of
the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Mr. Kehinde Akinyemi, called me on the
telephone, informing me that the State Director of the SSS, Mr. Joseph Okpo,
wanted to ‘see us’.
“When I asked him whether he knew the
reason for the SSS director’s invitation to ‘us’, he told me he just wanted to
‘see the two of us’.
“Akinyemi then asked that we meet at
the Iwe Irohin secretariat of the NUJ from where we would proceed to the SSS
office located in Oke-Mosan by 11.00am.
“The moment we got to the gate house
of the SSS office, I smelt a rat in the way we were attended to by the officer
manning the gate. While he gave Akinyemi the visitor’s tag, he told me I did
not need one.
“The SSS state director almost
immediately started interrogating me in the presence of Akinyemi, who merely
looked on.
“We were together in the deputy
director’s office until I was asked to go and make the first statement in the
principal staff officer’s office. By the time I returned, Akinyemi had left.
It would be interesting to note that
I had yet to take my breakfast as at the time we went into the SSS office and I
was not allowed the room to take even a drop of water throughout the more than
eight hours I spent in the SSS office.
“The correspondent chairman
resurfaced at about 8pm to join the NUJ chairman in ‘bailing’ me out of the SSS
detention.”
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Society