Impunity Spotlight: NIGERIA

Bayo Ohu, The Guardian

September 20, 2009, in Lagos, Nigeria

Ohu, 45, an assistant news editor for the influential private dailyThe Guardian, was shot by unidentified assailants as he answered a knock at the front door of his house in a northern suburb of Lagos. The six assailants took a laptop and cell phone, according to the journalist’s relatives and local news reports.

Ohu was preparing to head to church to meet his wife, and two of his five children were home at the time, local journalists told CPJ. Neighbors drove him to a local hospital, but staff refused to treat him because he was not accompanied by police, journalists and news reports said. He died before neighbors could get him to another hospital, local journalists told CPJ.

NIGERIA

With five unsolved murders, Nigeria holds a place on CPJ’s Impunity Index for the third year in a row. At least two journalists have been killed by individuals affiliated with Boko Haram, according to CPJ research, while others, like prominent news editor Bayo Ohu, were killed in connection with their reporting on local politics. Ohu was shot at his front door in 2009; in 2012, three suspects were acquitted of the crime after police failed to present any evidence. Nigeria has failed to respond to requests by the director-general of UNESCO, the U.N. agency mandated to promote press freedom, for the judicial status of this and several other journalist killings. In June 2015, CPJ wrote to then-President-elect Muhammadu Buhari asking him to depart from his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, by making the prosecution of killers of journalists a priority.

IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.028 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants

LAST YEAR: Ranked 12th with a rating of 0.030