Evelyn Okakwu
Evelyn Okakwu joined the Committee to Protect Journalists as a Nigeria consultant in August 2019. She was appointed CPJ’s West Africa correspondent in January 2021. Okakwu previously worked for four years as a judiciary correspondent for the Premium Times online newspaper and for two years as a general assignment reporter with the Peoples Daily newspaper in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. Okakwu has a Higher National Diploma from the Federal Polytechnic Mubi, Adama State, Nigeria.
In Nigeria, at least 56 journalists attacked and harassed as protests roil region
“He hit me with a gun butt,” Premium Times newspaper reporter Yakubu Mohammed told the Committee to Protect Journalists, recalling how he was struck by a police officer while reporting on cost-of-living protests in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja on August 1. Two other officers beat him, seized his phone, and threw him in a police…
Chained and blindfolded: Nigerian journalist Segun Olatunji recounts his detention
The arrest and detention of Segun Olatunji, the then-editor of the privately owned First News site, by Nigeria’s military in March triggered an outcry from local and international civil society, highlighting an uptick in the unlawful detention of journalists in the West African nation. Olatunji was taken from his Alagbado home in southwestern Lagos state by more than a dozen armed men who…
‘You better shut up’: A Ghana family’s relentless calls for justice
Kamilu Ibrahim Tahidu and his brothers gather every evening outside their family home in Ghana’s capital of Accra. They sit in a circle of plastic chairs and enjoy each others’ company. They pray together. And they never forget that one of them is missing. It’s been over four years since assassins came to their neighborhood,…
‘Like going to the war front’: Nigerian journalists offer tips for covering 2023 elections
In the early hours of February 1, unknown gunmen set fire to an office of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission and a police station in the country’s southeastern Anambra state. Days earlier, gunmen had attacked and killed soldiers and policemen at checkpoints along a road that connects nearby Enugu and Ebonyi states. The incidents underscored…
Four years since murder of Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela, Ghana’s journalists still attacked with impunity
The January 16, 2019, murder of Ghanaian journalist Ahmed Hussein-Suale Divela, who was gunned down by unidentified men months after threats by a local politician, sent shockwaves through the country’s press corps and yielded promises from leaders to find the killers and bring them to justice. But four years later – despite police assurances of progress and two arrests – nobody has been…