Investigative journalist David Hundeyin has clarified why he was listed as an accomplice in the Nigeria Police Force’s affidavit regarding the whistleblower, Isaac Bristol Tamunobifiri, PIDOM.
In the whistleblower’s trial, Hundeyin was identified as an accomplice by the Police declaration on Monday.
The Inspector General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun, filed nine charges against PIDOM on Tuesday. These counts included alleged money laundering, cybercrime, and distribution of secret papers that are categorized as confidential.
But in a Wednesday interview with News Central Television, Hundeyin said it was not unrelated to speaking the truth in a government that finds that offensive, as well as desperate attempts to drag him into the criminal probe in an effort to undermine his status as an international refugee and place him on an Interpol notice list, among other things.
The journalist further said that in 2023, attempts were made in Ghana and Kenya by the National Intelligence Agency to kidnap him overseas for disclosing the misconduct of multiple high-ranking government officials; as a result, he fled to the United Kingdom for safety.
“There were several attempts by the National Intelligence Agency to abduct me. They also tried to render me stateless. I even tried to change my country twice. There was an attempt to abduct me from Ghana, then I had to move to Kenya; and when they came for me in Kenya, I ran to the United Kingdom.
“This is part of the price that you have to pay when you decide to say the truth at the time it wasn’t fashionable to do so, especially a regime that sees truth-telling as an affront or threat to it,” he emphasised.
When asked if he was aware that he was named an accomplice in PIDOM’s trial, Hundeyin said that he had always been ready for it. This is why he made the decision to go public, especially after considering the circumstances surrounding the handler’s decision to grant him access to the account and the manner in which the whistleblower X handle contacted him.
“The attempts by those people to hack my devices, which led to me replacing them, made it clear to me that some things were going on that I didn’t want to be a party to. The educated guess that I had then was that this was probably a state security attempt to rope me into some criminal investigation to discredit my international refugee status and go after political opponent journalists and whistleblowers like myself and PIDOM. It is a thing Nigeria, and other countries are likely to do.
“And just like I guess, truth to form, they named me a suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation for the purpose of creating a narrative basis possibly to put me on an Interpol notice list which makes it more difficult for me to travel essentially to make the world feel like they are closing in on me. And as you know getting hold of David Hundeyin is one of the most important security priorities of the Nigerian establishment. It doesn’t matter that you have terrorists flaunting ransom on TikTok,” he added.
