Mr Sunday Michael Ogwu, an editor with Nigerian online newspaper, Pinnacle Daily, was on August 19, 2026, beaten with cable wires and had his phone seized and damaged by police officers attached to the Lugbe Police Station in Abuja while documenting a demolition exercise being carried out in a joint operation involving police officers and members of a vigilante group in the area.
According to media reports, Mr Ogwu said he was strolling that evening when he came across the joint operation by policemen and members of a vigilante group, whereupon he began documenting the exercise. He said, in the process, some officers confronted him, adding that the officers seized his phone and ordered some of their colleagues to beat him.
He said: “I was badly beaten. Eventually, they said they would take me to the station, and then they asked me to leave.”
The editor said he later shared what he recorded on social media, after which the officers sent people after him, and his phone was eventually confiscated. He added that he saw “Lugbe Police Station” written on one of the pickup vans used for the operation.
He said he repeatedly asked the officers to identify the leader of the operation, but they refused.
“I saw Lugbe Police Station written on the van of one of the pickups that they came out for the special operation with. I asked them repeatedly to tell me who was the leader of that operation, but they refused,” he said.
In a video he shared on Facebook, he said the officers asked if he obtained permission to cover the exercise and that he told them he did not require permission to document what he considered a public function.
He said: “I told them this is a public function and I don’t think what you are doing is illegal. If you’re carrying out proper work, you shouldn’t be afraid a journalist is covering it. Instead, I was given several strokes and was asked to leave.”
