The Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre (NPF-NCCC) on Tuesday grilled Bukky Shonibare, the chairman of FIJ’s Board of Trustees, at their Abuja office, only letting her go after making her promise to “produce” ‘Fisayo Soyombo, FIJ’s founder.
The NPF-NCCC had invited Shonibare to an interview with its director to answer questions about cybercrime and seek clarification from FIJ about a case it was investigating. With nothing to hide, Shonibare, herself a lawyer, honoured the invitation, accompanied by FIJ’s legal counsel.
“As you know, we’ve never revealed the identities of the board members of FIJ, not even me as the board chair. That’s for security reasons,” Shonibare told FIJ on Thursday.
“But because they are law enforcement agents, they have the power to remove the veil, you know. This means that they can go to CAC or any similar organisations to obtain information about the person. So, that’s what they did to get my information: name, email address, phone number and everything.
“So, I got the email from them on Saturday. Fast forward to Monday, one of the officers called me. Her name is SP Ann Elunor.
“I was there a few minutes before nine o’clock and did some briefing with my lawyer, Folarin Aluko. Samson Itodo of YIAGA Africa also came there in solidarity. So, we got in and signed in at immediately 9:09 am. They asked me to drop my phone and all of that, but I told them that I did not come with my phone. I had been advised to leave my phone behind. I was there with my lawyer, there was another junior lawyer and Samson Itodo, but they said that I could only go in with one person. So, I went in with the senior lawyer.
“We didn’t drop anything at the gate. When we were signing in, they said we should write ‘threat response’ as the department we came to visit. I was surprised because this would imply that the organisation and I were considered to have engaged in cyber threatening. We were uncomfortable with that but we had to write it. So that there wouldn’t be any form of ambiguity, because they were asking me to write ‘TR’, I wrote the ‘Threat Response’ in full. Trust me, I was thinking of Jamal Khashoggi at this time. People had to know exactly where we went to.”
