Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) has alerted the police in the country’s capital over a plot to kill four journalists, urging adequate security for them and their families, officials said Saturday.
The petition by the NUJ to the Abuja police came barely a week after three journalists were killed in two separate incidents in the country.
“By this protest letter, we are handing over these journalists to your protective custody and hope that no harm will come to either them or members of their families,” NUJ chairman Jacob Edi said.
He said unidentified persons had sent a phone text message to Gbenga Aruleba, Yusuf Ali, Olusola Fabiyi and Chuks Okocha — all working for private media houses in Abuja – threatening to kill them.
Edi said the journalists were accused of writing stories that led to the removal of Maurice Iwu, the boss of the electoral body INEC.
Iwu was sacked last week by Acting President Goodluck Jonathan ahead of general elections next year.
The NUJ said it was worried by the threat, coming after the killings of three journalist last week.
Edo Sule Ugbagwu, a 42-year-old court reporter with the Nation daily, was shot several times in the head at close range on Saturday evening.
Two journalists, working for a Christian journal, were also slain the same day in the city of Jos, the epicentre of deadly violence that has killed some 1,500 people since January.
In September 2009, a senior editor with the influential Guardian newspaper in Lagos, Bayo Ohu, was gunned down.
Two senior journalists with ThisDay newspaper, Godwin Agbroko and Abayomi Ogundeji, were shot in similar circumstances in 2006 and 2008 in Lagos.
A media association in southwestern Ogun State said on Sunday it had uncovered a plot to assassinate eight journalists in the state.