The Media Rights Agenda (MRA), an NGO for the protection and promotion of press freedom, says it is taking steps to secure the release of detained Kogi journalist, Mr Friday Ogungbemi.

Ogungbemi, publisher of a community newspaper, is allegedly being detained by the Department of the State Services (DSS).

Mr Ayode Longe, Programme Manager, MRA told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Lagos that the organisation had begun a process to draw attention to the plight of the journalist.

Longe said that though the DSS and other law enforcement agents had the right to detain anyone they perceived to have committed an offence, they, however, had no right to detain beyond 24 hours.

He noted that after 24 hours, a suspect was supposed to be charged to court.

“The international alert is to do a story on the condition under which Ogungbemi was arrested and send to the  international community, that is, the community of freedom of expression NGOs. We have already commenced the process last week.

“The state government has no right to ask for the detention of anybody. If it thinks that it has been maligned, it should sue the publisher.

“Even when Ogungbemi was detained, he should be charged to court within 24 hours and the court can decide whether or not to grant him bail. It is not the duty of the DSS or governor to grant or refuse him bail.’’

He said the alert would put pressure on the Nigerian government to prevail on the DSS to release Ogungbemi.

The Programme Manager said that the MRA had no locus standi to begin legal proceedings against the DSS except Ogungbemi or any of his family members permits it.

He explained that the MRA belonged to a network of about 150 NGOs that work on freedom of expression globally.

NAN reports that the Kogi council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists had issued a communiqué on Monday, directing its members to boycott government activities as a way of protest.

The communiqué viewed the detention “as an affront on the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the 1948 United Nations Human Rights Charter’’.

It also viewed the arrest as an attempt to muzzle the press in the state and urged the DSS and Kogi State government “to secure his release without further delay as his arrest amounts to abuse of his fundamental Human Rights’’. (NAN)