The disappearance of the guy who tweeted live pics of soldiers during the Boko Haram jail attempt on Sunday March 30th has made international news. Report from BBC below...
A man who live-tweeted
from the scene of an attempted jailbreak in the Nigerian capital Abuja
12 days ago, has disappeared. Activists believe he may have been
arrested, and have launched a Twitter campaign for his release.
The hashtag #FreeCiaxon and the Twitter handle @ciaxonIt was big news in Nigeria. The SSS HQ is a stone's throw
have been trending in Nigeria since late on Wednesday. There's also a
lot of discussion about it on Facebook. On 30 March, the man who runs
the @ciaxon account found himself at the scene of a dramatic fight
between Nigerian security forces and detainees trying to escape from the
State Security Service (SSS) headquarters.
from the presidential palace, and the detainees were - according to
officials - suspected militants from the notorious group, Boko Haram.
Official sources say more than 20 people were killed.
Much of the news came from social media sources at the scene -
like @ciaxon. It's believed Yusuf Siyaka Onimisi - also referred to as
Isiaka Yusuf - runs @ciaxon. He tweeted developments, including a series of images
showing both the attackers and Nigerian soldiers. The pictures were
picked up by news outlets in the country. But since then, there has been
complete silence on Twitter from @ciaxon. And the silence has not been
just virtual. Yusuf Siyaka Onimisi's brother Sanusi told BBC Trending
that he has not been able to reach him since that day. His car has been
left abandoned. "Nobody has given us any information. We are in the
darkness. It's inhuman, it's very, very unfair," he says. When a friend
contacted Yusuf Siyaka Onimisi's workplace to ask where he was, he was
told he had been arrested.
The SSS has not responded to confirm or deny Yusuf Siyaka
Onimisi's detention. But Nigerians have taken to social media to demand
answers. "How can you arrest people for taking pictures - this is the
21st Century," says Fola Lawal, a Nigerian now based in Qatar, who
started the Twitter hashtag #FreeCiaxon. "I would have done the same in
his shoes. It's called citizen reporting."
Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission has started an
investigation into his whereabouts. High-profile figures, including the
World Bank's former Africa vice-president Obiageli Ezekwesili, have tweeted
calling for his release. "It's very, very important this gets
attention," says lawyer and writer Ayo Sogunro, who's been researching
and tweeting actively about the case. Critics say the government is
trying to regulate social media. The irony in this case, says Sogunro,
is the tweets from the @ciaxon account were broadly supportive of the
security forces.
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