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In May 2024, Daniel Ojukwu, a twenty-six-year-old reporter for the Foundation for Investigative Journalism, a Nigerian nonprofit, was grabbed off the streets of Lagos by armed police and bundled into a vehicle. For the next several days, he was held in a cell incommunicado—first in Lagos, and later in the federal capital, Abuja—without being told exactly what he’d been arrested for. “It was more of an abduction,” Ojukwu recalled recently, via WhatsApp. Finally, on the fourth day, the authorities informed him that he was being accused of breaching a 2015 law known as the Cybercrime Act. His violation: an article he wrote about alleged corruption in the office of the president.

The Cybercrime Act was introduced to combat a growing trend of internet fraud and other criminal activity within Nigeria, but it has instead frequently been used to suppress journalism published online. One provision in particular—Section 24, which made it illegal to publish false information online that was deemed to be “grossly offensive,” “indecent,” or even merely an “annoyance”—has been especially ripe for abuse. In 2019, for instance, Agba Jalingo, a journalist and publisher of CrossRiverWatch, in Nigeria’s Cross River State, was arrested and charged under Section 24 after he published articles accusing the state’s governor of corruption. (He was later acquitted.) In February 2024, Nigerian lawmakers amended Section 24 to remove some of its most egregious elements, but the new language still makes it illegal, and punishable by up to three years in jail, to “knowingly or intentionally” communicate online anything that is “false, for the purpose of causing a breakdown of law and order [or] posing a threat to life.”

“This vague text is still used to unfairly prosecute journalists, particularly those who regularly publish investigative reports implicating political or institutional forces,” said Sadibou Marong, the sub-Saharan Africa bureau director of Reporters Without Borders. “Authorities are intent on gagging investigative journalism uncovering corruption and governance issues in the country. The continued implementation of this law constitutes a real threat.”

Nigeria is not the only country using laws designed to legitimately combat online misbehavior to instead repress journalism. In neighboring Niger, Abdourahamane Tchiani, who seized power in a coup in 2023, signed an order amending three articles of the country’s cybercrime law to reinstate prison sentences for “defamation,” “insults,” and the “dissemination of data likely to disturb public order or undermine human dignity” when these offenses are committed electronically. The law, originally enacted in 2019, had previously been softened to remove prison sentences for such offenses, in part owing to how the law had been abused to repress journalists. In Pakistan, Georgia, and Turkey, among others, recent laws meant to limit nefarious activity online, or the spread of misinformation, have been used to restrict acts of journalism. According to Amnesty International, at least fifteen people in Jordan have been prosecuted under a 2023 expansion of the country’s Cybercrimes Law, for offenses ranging from “spreading fake news” to “threatening society peace.”

“Unfortunately, most of the laws being passed will have little effect in actually curbing misinformation, but instead may give governments far more authority to control content they deem false or misleading,” said Gabrielle Lim, a doctoral fellow at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who recently coauthored a paper tracking the misuse of “fake news” laws around the world. “For some governments, the threat of misinformation provides a convenient justification for censorship. This is compounded by the fact that liberal democracies are also considering or passing similar laws, which can give cover to authoritarian regimes who want to do the same.” 

In Nigeria, more than two dozen journalists have faced prosecution under the Cybercrime Act, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In most cases, the journalists have been accused of cyberbullying, cyberstalking, or attempting to overthrow the government. On February 16, 2024—two weeks before the amended Cybercrime Act was signed into law—four journalists of The Informant247, an independent online newspaper based in Nigeria’s Kwara State, were arrested and briefly detained after they published a two-part investigative series that alleged a corrupt atmosphere at a state-run polytechnic institute. “The experience was profoundly disturbing,” said Salihu Ayatullahi, the publication’s editor in chief and one of the arrested journalists. “We were locked in a dark, cramped cell with hardened criminals. The psychological impact was heavier than the physical discomfort: I couldn’t sleep, not because of the poor conditions, but because I couldn’t stop thinking about how broken our system had become and how the corrupt could illegally summon the police to punish those who expose them.” The case was dismissed eleven months later without any evidence presented against the reporters.

Solomon Okedara, a Nigerian digital rights lawyer and researcher, notes that the use of the Cybercrime Act has created a chilling effect in the nation’s civic space. “It is even more worrisome that most of the time, the prosecution cannot establish ingredients of the offense to the point of conviction,” Okedara said. “Knowing a fellow journalist has faced arrest, harassment, and detention, or endless trials, can force others to drop an investigative story idea.”

Despite their ordeals, both Ojukwu and Ayatullahi say they are more determined than ever to use their craft to hold public officials accountable. “As a journalist, the whole experience has made me understand that there is more work to do,” Ojukwu said. “And since there is no limit to which the corrupt are willing to go, there is also none for me. The Cybercrime Act remains a thorn in the flesh of journalists in Nigeria.”