For some delegates, just getting to the West African Journalists Association (WAJA) regional conference in Dakar, Senegal, was an impressive achievement. While his colleagues used more conventional modes of transportation, Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) president Frank Kposowa navigated his way out of the country by night in a hired motorized dugout canoe. The…
Three weeks after exiled Nigerian journalist Dapo Olorunyomi spoke of his imprisoned wife’s plight at an April CPJ roundtable on Gen. Sani Abacha’s media crackdown, she was released. Nigerian authorities had held Ladi Olorunyomi, a journalist and women’s rights advocate affiliated with the Independent Journalism Center in Lagos, for 68 days without criminal charges. Within…
Six months after the coup in Niger led by General Ibrahim Mainassara, during the July 1996 national elections, Radio Anfani managing director Gremah Boucar faced down numerous attempts by Mainassara’s military regime to force the station permanently off the air, including a one-month period where soldiers stormed and occupied the Anfani studios. Almost a year…
After centuries of feudal rule, 17 years of communist dictatorship, almost three decades of civil war, and no tradition of an independent press before 1992, Ethiopia is at a crossroads. As one of the African continent’s youngest exercises in democracy, Ethiopia can serve as an example of a true democracy–one that does not sacrifice freedom…
On Dec. 23, 1995, six agents of Nigeria’s State Security Service (SSS) arrested Nosa Igiebor, the editor in chief of the best-selling weekly magazine Tell, as he prepared to leave his Lagos home for work. Igiebor, a 1993 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, had just resurfaced after months in hiding. While he was…