Nigeria’s intelligence agency, the Department of State Security(DSS) on December 29, 2019, invited Mr Ayoola Babalola, a student who serves as editor of a campus newspaper at Gateway ICT Polytechnic, Saapade, in Ogun State for interrogation over articles it published about Mr Omoyele Sowore, convener of #RevolutionNow.
The articles were critical of Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) party and President Muhammadu Buhari. Babalola was secretly tried and sent to prison..
The DSS called Babalola and asked him to report at its Remo North Office for interrogation on the matter. Babalola, now a graduate of the institution, posted the invitation on his Facebook page.
The campus newspaper had recently published controversial articles demanding good governance and obedience to rule of law in Nigeria including: ‘Will EFCC investigate Chief Bola Tinubu?’, ‘Sowore: An equal opportunity offender’, and ‘President Buhari does not believe in Nigeria’.
The Rector of the institution, Mr I. K. Oyeyinka, an avowed member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) reportedly apologized to the APC saying the article was against the interest of the party. He also demoted the supervising lecturer of the campus newspaper, Mrs Salami O. A., who resigned from the school as a result. Oyeyinka subsequently boasted that he sacked her.
The Rector was reported saying: “I have sacked the lecturer in charge, the paper sounds like anti-APC.”
“Reporting Sowore’s story and writing against Tinubu, this is an APC school and I’m an APC member.
“Before they sack me, I will sack her first”.
