By Halimah Olamide
Investigative journalist, David Hundeyin, has revealed why the Nigerian Police Force has declared him an accomplice in the trial of undercover journalist, PIDOM.
Hundeyin disclosed this in an interview on Wednesday.
Recall that NPO reported that PIDOM was reminded in Kuje correctional facility, Abuja on Tuesday.
He was arraigned on nine counts brought against him by the Inspector General of Police, including alleged money laundering, cybercrime, and disseminating classified secret documents.
NPO reports that Hundeyin was the one who brought to the notice of the public the disappearance of PIDOM.
According to him, the reason for linking him as an accomplice with PIDOM is as a result of his unravelling of many top government ills.
He further revealed that there were numerous attempts to abduct him after which he had to flee to the United Kingdom.
“There were several attempts by the National Intelligence Agency to abduct me. They also tried to render me stateless. I even tried to change my country twice. There was an attempt to abduct me from Ghana, then I had to move to Kenya; and when they came for me in Kenya, I ran to the United Kingdom.
“This is part of the price that you have to pay when you decide to say the truth at the time it wasn’t fashionable to do so, especially a regime that sees truth-telling as an affront or threat to it,” he stressed.
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Speaking on whether he knew he was declared an accomplice in PIDOM’s trial, Hundeyin said he had always prepared for it, which is why he decided to go public, especially after examining the way the whistleblower X handle reached out to him and the scenarios that made the handler give him access to the account.
“The attempts by those people to hack my devices, which led to me replacing them, made it clear to me that some things were going on that I didn’t want to be a party to. The educated guess that I had then was that this was probably a state security attempt to rope me into some criminal investigation to discredit my international refugee status and go after political opponent journalists and whistleblowers like myself and PIDOM. It is a thing Nigeria, and other countries are likely to do.
“And just like I guess, truth to form, they named me a suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation to create a narrative basis possibly to put me on an Interpol notice list which makes it more difficult for me to travel essentially to make the world feel like they are closing in on me. And as you know getting hold of David Hundeyin is one of the most important security priorities of the Nigerian establishment. It doesn’t matter that you have terrorists flaunting ransom on TikTok,” he added.
Speaking on PIDOM’s status, Hundeyin alleged that the suspect was sprayed with a toxic substance in FCID detention and had been having extreme difficulty breathing since then, stressing, “He cannot breathe properly; you can hear it in his voice. Something is wrong with him.”
PIDOMNigeria was accused of leaking classified and restricted documents, fraud, sedition, and tax evasion.
Addressing journalists in Abuja on Tuesday, the Force Spokesperson, Muyiwa Adejobi, said PIDOM was arrested following a petition from the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
Adejobi added that when operatives of the National Cybercrime Centre stormed PIDOM’s hotel, he resisted arrest, locked himself up, destroyed his phone, and flushed it down the toilet.