Mr. Oke Epia, publisher of OrderPaper Nigeria, on July 26, 2019 accused Tony Nwulu, a former member of the House of Representatives, of threatening his life and those of his colleagues.
Oke said in a statement that he and his colleagues at OrderPaper received calls from Nwulu and “strange persons,” some of whom refused to identify themselves, threatening to hunt them down at all costs.
Saying Nwulu should be held responsible if anything untoward happens to him or of his colleagues, the publisher said: “Mr. Nwulu went on a binge of verbal attacks and was calling my colleagues and issuing threats with a promise to hunt us down at all costs.”
“Given the wave of attacks against journalists in recent times, we have decided to bring this matter to the public domain and let the world know that should anything untoward happen to me or any of our colleagues or the media establishment itself, Mr. Nwulu should be held responsible,” he added, citing Press Attack Tracker, which monitors attacks against journalists in the country which documented at least 36 incidents of attacks against Nigerian journalists between January and July this year.
“So when we now have someone saying that he will hunt us down, we need to make the world aware even though we have initiated appropriate steps to seek legal protection and redress both for ourselves and the reputation of our organization,” he said.
Nwulu accused Oke of blackmailing him, saying OrderPaper accused him of spending millions of naira meant for a constituency project but he asked them to provide evidence to back up their accusation but they could not.
However Oke said he and OderPapers stand by their story and insist that records available since the publication have further corroborated their reportage.
Oke was later invited to the National Assembly division of the Nigerian Police Force over what the police described as ‘criminal complaint’ lodged against himw.
On July 30, 2019 he honoured the police invitation and was briefly detained and interrogated.
