Nigerian newspaper says army prevented distribution

A Nigerian newspaper says the army has prevented the distribution of its Saturday edition copies, after it published a story alleging corruption among military generals.

The Weekly Trust, an Abuja-based national weekly newspaper, said soldiers visited a number of its premises and prevented the papers from leaving the sites.

“The soldiers, who were fully armed, insisted on carrying out the ‘order from above’ to flip through each of the several thousand copies of Weekly Trust in search of alleged ‘security risk material’,” the newspaper said in a Saturday statement.

The statement added that even after the soldiers finished spinning the newspapers “without finding any incriminating item” they still prevented the newspaper’s sales personnel from distributing Weekly Trust.

The daily distribution is said to have been blocked at three different sites in the cities of Abuja, Kano and Maiduguri.

The raids came after the newspaper’s daily edition on Wednesday published a story, alleging that army generals were using a barracks in Abuja for personal use.

Similar raids were also carried out on several other newspapers in the African country on Friday and Saturday.

On June 3, the Abuja-based daily, Leadership, reported that 15 senior military officers, including 10 generals, have been found guilty of giving information and ammunition to Boko Haram Takfiri militants.

The Nigerian army is currently under pressure for its failure to contain the militant group, which in April kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls in the northeastern town of Chibok in Borno State.

Boko Haram — whose name means “Western education is forbidden” — says its goal is to overthrow the Nigerian government.