On October 21, 2020, two reporters with the privately-owned daily, The Punch newspapers, Femi Dawodu and SegunOdunayo, were arrested, tortured and detained at the Alausa police station for covering the #EndSARS protests in Alausa, one of the major demonstration grounds of the protesters calling for a total overhaul of the Nigeria Police Force.
According to the journalists, no fewer than 20 policemen guarding the Lagos State House of Assembly in Alausa swooped on them while they were recording a live video of the activities in the area. The reporters were ordered to stop the recording but refused.
The policemen became annoyed and pounced on them when they identified themselves as journalists with their media identity cards.
Narrating their ordeal, Segun said the policemen tortured them for four hours, stripped them of their clothes, made them to lie on bare floor, beat them with a stick and the butt of guns, and took a video recording of them while torturing them at the Lagos State House of Assembly.
Continuing, Segun said “What got the policemen annoyed was that we saw them using a stick and a rubber to beat a young man and during the live video, they heard me saying that they were beating someone. So, after they arrested us, they tortured us and demanded that we should do another live video denying the statement but we refused.”
“Each time we refused, they slapped us, used a stick to beat us, used the butt of their guns to hit our heads and bodies after stripping us of our clothes. All they want was for us to do another live broadcast to claim that we lied and we didn’t because we said the truth.”
Femi revealed that they were released at the Alausa Police Station only after the state Police Public Relations Officer, MuyiwaAdejobi, intervened. Before they were released however, the policemen took their details, including their addresses, took a video record of them and threatened to come after them if any negative report was published about what happened.
Femi said: “But despite his intervention, we were told to write statements. They collected our details, address, took video recordings of us making false statements during the torture, and threatened to use it to blackmail and go after us if we end up doing any bad report against them.”
