Civic Pulse Nigeria
Quarterly civic space report
Q2 2024
April to June 2024
Complete quarter. Generated 19 Sept 2026.
- Published records
- 3
- Change on Q1 2024
- +2
- States named
- 2
- Reporting organisations
- 3
3 civic space records were published for April to June 2024, against 1 in January to March 2024. Arrests and Detention was the most frequently recorded category. 1 of these came from reports written at national level that name no state.
Records by category
- Arrests & Detention2
- Legal & Regulatory1
- Citizen Engagement0
- Government Discourse0
- Resource Access0
- Harassment0
Where records were located
- Federal Capital Territory1
- Lagos1
Plus 1 national-level record naming no state.
Who reported these incidents
- Rights monitors
- 0
- News outlets
- 3
- Official and court records
- 0
- Al Jazeera1
- AllAfrica1
- Channels Television1
The records
- 11 Jun 2024·Federal Capital Territory·CPN-0070
Nigerian police detained journalist Madu Onuorah over alleged defamation
Madu Onuorah, publisher and editor-in-chief of Globalupfront Newspaper, was arrested at his residence in Abuja on 22 May 2024 by officers of the Ebonyi State Police Command acting on a petition over an allegedly defamatory publication, and released the following night by the Enugu State Police Command.
- AllAfrica: https://allafrica.com/stories/202406110591.html
- Committee to Protect Journalists: https://cpj.org/2024/05/nigerian-journalist-madu-onuorah-arrested-for-alleged-defamation-released-on-bail/
- 10 May 2024·Lagos·CPN-0071
Journalist Daniel Ojukwu freed after 10 days in detention
Officers of the police Intelligence Response Team arrested Foundation for Investigative Journalism reporter Daniel Ojukwu on 1 May 2024 and held him at the State CID, Panti, Lagos, over a November report alleging that a senior presidential aide paid N147 million in public money into a restaurant's bank account. His whereabouts were unknown for 24 hours. He was moved to the National Cybercrime Centre in Abuja and freed after 10 days.
- Channels Television: https://www.channelstv.com/2024/05/10/breaking-journalist-ojukwu-freed-after-10-days-in-detention/
- Committee to Protect Journalists: https://cpj.org/2024/05/nigerian-police-secretly-arrest-journalist-daniel-ojukwu-over-critical-report/
- Human Rights Watch: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/05/09/nigerian-journalists-detention-threatens-press-freedom
- 20 Apr 2024·National·CPN-0072
Nigeria's cybercrime reforms leave journalists at risk
President Bola Tinubu signed amendments to the Cybercrimes Act in February 2024 that narrowed the section 24 cyberstalking offence to messages that are pornographic or knowingly false and intended to cause a breakdown of law and order or threaten life. Critics warned the reform still leaves journalists open to arrest, and at least 29 journalists have been prosecuted under the law since it was enacted in 2015.
How this report was compiled
Every record in this report is compiled by hand from reports published by named rights monitors, news outlets and official bodies, and links to the source it draws on. Each record is dated to the incident where its source gives that date, and otherwise to the date the source was published. The figures show what has been recorded, not the full extent of what has happened: incidents that were never reported do not appear, and a state with few records is not necessarily a state where little took place.