Security officers, believed to be from the State Security Service (SSS), arrested Edna Ulaeto, a journalist with the news outlet OrderPaper, in a raid on her home on Friday.
According to a statement from the OrderPaper management, a group of armed men who identified themselves as SSS agents from the Office of the National Security Adviser stormed Mrs. Ulaeto's residence early on Friday morning.
The statement said the SSS officers reportedly manhandled her while she was still in her nightwear and took her to an undisclosed location.
“The young woman, still in casual sleepwear, was violently abused and taken to an unknown destination, leaving her family and neighbors in a state of shock and fear,” the statement read.
OrderPaper also revealed that his phone number had been tracked without authorization.
The arrest is believed to be related to a recent OrderPaper article that wrongly reported an alleged SSS operation in the National Assembly, supposedly aimed at preventing an attempt to remove Senate President Godswill Akpabio.
Although the newspaper retracted the story and publicly apologized, masked officers broke into Ms. Ulaeto's home, searched her personal belongings and caused her and her family great distress.
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The statement said his neighbors who tried to intervene or document the incident were allegedly pushed away, and some were forced to delete photos and videos under threat of arrest.
The organization further said that no formal notice or invitation was sent to Ms Ulaeto or OrderPaper before the raid, raising concerns about the legality of the operation.
Efforts to locate her after the arrest were unsuccessful, raising fears about her safety.
“This brazen and terrifying act has left all OrderPaper staff living in fear, not knowing what will happen next,” the statement continued.
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The statement called on civil society organizations and the international community to demand his immediate release and condemn what it described as an attack on press freedom and basic human rights.
PREMIUM TIMES was unable to contact the SSS because the secret police, for months, remained without an official spokesperson.
Many concerns about press freedom
Ms Ulaeto's arrest is the latest in a series of worrying incidents against journalists in Nigeria, where press freedom has come under increasing pressure in recent years.
PREMIUM TIMES reported that Press Attack Tracker has revealed that in 2024 alone, more than 100 cases of violence and intimidation against journalists have been recorded.
Federal security agencies, including the police and SSS, are responsible for most of these attacks.
In one such case, on August 25, SSS agents arrested and detained multiple award-winning investigative journalist Adejuwon Soyinka for hours, blaming his arrest on “possible mistaken identity.”
Daniel Ojukwu of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism was detained without access to family or legal advice and subsequently flown to Abuja, where he was held for nine days before being released.
Other journalists have suffered harassment, arrest and intimidation for their work. In one incident, reporters Nurudeen Akewushola and Dayo Aiyetan of the International Center for Investigative Journalism (ICIR) were detained for several hours at the Nigerian Police National Cybercrime Center for a story they had published.
As cases of press intimidation increase, advocacy groups have expressed concern that Nigeria is witnessing a significant setback in press freedom. Despite constitutional protections, journalists are increasingly attacked for their work, and state actors use arbitrary detention and harassment as tools of repression.