Barely two weeks after Police stray bullet killed Precious Owolabi a corper reporter of the Channels tv opposite the national Assembly Complex, another journalist, Oke Epia, Editor in Chief of Order Paper has been detained by police attached to the National Assembly (NASS).
Epia, who honoured the police invitation over an alleged false publication, was said to have been seen at the presidential gate police station and was interrogated by detectives.
Journalists, who visited to know what was happening to their colleague, were politely asked to remain outside until interrogation was concluded.
The police in a letter dated July 26, 2019, had invited him to appear Tuesday at the NASS police station.
Without further information on the complaint, the letter noted that the gesture to Mr Epia is a fact-finding invitation.
The Editor-in-Chief in a statement, however, believed that the invitation was part of attacks on his media house by a former member of the House of Representatives Tony Nwulu.
The paper in a publication, prior to the 2019 general elections, had profiled Rep members vying for either governorship or deputy governorship positions and in profiling Nwulu, OrderPaper said it reached out to the lawmaker to account for ‘missing funds and projects for Zonal Intervention Projects in the 2016 budget, a claim he is yet to respond to.’
In his reaction on Twitter, Nwulu branded the newspaper as fake, alleging that it never made an assessment of his stewardship.
“Fake medium. No sensible person should take you guys serious. Tribal bigots. At least your faceless promoters should try running for office and effect the change the desire and not just being pathetic armchair critics hiding under a useless medium to extort,” he tweeted on his handle @tonynwulu.
Epia, in a statement on Friday had raised the alarm that he and his colleagues have received threats to their lives.
He alleged that himself and other journalists in Order Paper have received threat calls directly from Mr Nwulu and strange calls and text messages from persons some of whom refused to identify themselves.
