Meta Takes Down FIJ Facebook Page As Nigerian Police, DSS Crackdown On Investigative Journalists
On Sunday, a pop-up notification informed FIJ that its page, “FIJ Nigeria,” had been unpublished for going against community standards on cybersecurity.
Meta Platforms Inc., the owner of Facebook, has taken down the official Facebook page of the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), citing alleged violations of its cybersecurity standards.
On Sunday, a pop-up notification informed FIJ that its page, “FIJ Nigeria,” had been unpublished for going against community standards on cybersecurity.
FIJ has since denied the allegation, insisting that Meta’s cybersecurity rules do not apply to its operations. The newsroom confirmed it had filed an appeal for the restoration of the account, with Meta expected to give a decision by Thursday.
As of press time, the Facebook page remained inaccessible.
FIJ described the suspension as part of a broader pattern of attempts to silence its reporting.
The organisation recalled how, on August 21, its website was forced offline after what it traced to coordinated cyberattacks launched from the headquarters of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC).
This comes amid a crackdown by the Nigeria Police Force against the staff members of the investigative media platform.
SaharaReporters earlier on Wednesday reported that the Ekiti State Police Command had summoned Fisayo Soyombo, founder and editor-in-chief of the platform, for interrogation over allegations of conspiracy, criminal defamation, cyberbullying, and blackmail.
FIJ disclosed that the invitation came barely an hour before the release of its senior reporter, Sodeeq Atanda, who had been detained and grilled by the police for about 11 hours on Tuesday.
Atanda had earlier been invited on September 1 to answer questions bordering on “malicious misrepresentation” and similar allegations.
In the fresh letter addressed to the newsroom, Musa Hadi, Assistant Commissioner of Police in charge of the State Intelligence Department (SID), directed Soyombo to appear at the state headquarters in Ado-Ekiti on September 15, stating that his name had come up in an ongoing investigation.
FIJ observed that the so-called probe is linked to its series of hard-hitting reports exposing sexual misconduct allegations against Abayomi Fasina, Vice Chancellor of the Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), who is currently on leave — a development that sources told SaharaReporters amounts to a suspension.
The reports detailed Fasina’s alleged harassment of Folasade Adebayo, a serving director at the university
In a related development, the Department of State Services (DSS) had petitioned Meta Platforms Inc. and X (formerly Twitter) management, calling for the immediate deactivation of Omoyele Sowore’s verified accounts.
Sowore, publisher of SaharaReporters, had used the accounts to criticise President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Sowore, in a statement on Monday, described the DSS as “lawless, idle and incompetent,” accusing the secret police of abandoning its duty of securing Nigerians to instead act as “Tinubu’s social media police.”
“Lawless DSS, too idle and incompetent to secure Nigeria, where over 130 citizens were killed just yesterday, has now written to Facebook begging them to delete content they find ‘offensive’ to their equally idle, tired, and criminal Commander-in-Chief, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” Sowore wrote on X.
Again, I ask Nigerians: how long do you want to continue being held hostage by a tiny, wicked, inhumane band of rogues?” he added.
