The Maitama Division of the FCT High Court has fixed November 7 to pass judgement on a lawsuit filed by Peoples Gazette against the Nigerian government for restricting access to the newspaper’s website since January 2021, in a coordinated cyber attack that rendered it inaccessible to millions of its readers.
Justice Obiora Egwuatu will deliver judgement on the matter, ending yearslong controversy on whether the Muhammadu Buhari regime was justified in clamping down on the newspaper and whether the restriction will be lifted.
Rights lawyer Ini Effiong is representing Peoples Gazette in the matter, while the NCC and the telcos arrayed senior lawyers who did not present a single story that The Gazette ran that could be deemed as antithetical to national security, even though that was their only pretext for blocking the digital newspaper’s website in January 2021.
The judgement is also expected to clarify the particular story that angered the Nigerian government into issuing the rash order to telecom operators like MTN and Airtel to block their customers from accessing the site.
The immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, already filed a motion to extricate his involvement from the matter in May 2023. He asserted that he “was not even aware of the circumstances leading” to the attack and shifted the responsibility of defending the Nigerian government to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
MTN and 9 Mobile, major telecom operators, admitted they were directed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to block their subscribers from opening the site.
The NCC said a story on the website threatened national security and triggered the restriction but failed to specify the story, leaving millions of The Gazette’s readers digitally stranded.
However, The Gazette learned from government sources that its site restriction was a result of a story about the growing influence of the son of Ibrahim Gambari, Mr Buhari’s chief of staff when he was in office.
Bolaji Gambari was authorising administrative regulations and fixing top secret executive briefings barely five months after Mr Buhari appointed his father, Ibrahim Gambari, as the chief of staff.
Mr Gambari had made several efforts, all of which were in vain, to get The Gazette to delete the story.
Sources said he resorted to attacking the site as a means of limiting the newspaper’s readership.
