According to him, if he is renditioned to Nigeria, he will be killed.
Nigerian journalist, David Hundeyin, has appealed to President Nana Akufo-Addo-led Ghanaian government not to give in to President Bola Tinubu government’s alleged pressure to repatriate him to Nigeria.
Hundeyin made the appeal in a video he personally posted X (formerly Twitter) with the caption, ‘A public appeal to Ghanaian president @NAkufoAddo, the Ghanaian Ministry of Interior and the Ghana Refugee Board.’
According to him, if he is renditioned to Nigeria, he will be killed.
“I have written high-risk stories that I can’t think of any Nigerian journalist alive or dead who has attempted… Okay, maybe Dele Giwa. And he paid for it with his life. He got a letter bomb and he died. And that was one such story. I have done several.
“So, there is a reason I can’t step foot in Nigeria. If I step foot in Nigeria, I am going to die. That’s a fact. I will die.”
He alleged that the Nigerian government was mounting pressure on Ghana to repatriate him following his revelation of Tinubu’s alleged illegal deployment of Nigeria’s special forces into the territory of the Republic of Niger to enforce a ‘no-fly zone’, which according to him, simply meant staging an unprovoked military attack against an independent country and a friendly nation to Nigeria following the military takeover in Niger.
He said, “Last month (August) when there was ongoing back and forth within the ECOWAS board between those who wanted to go to war with the coup regime in Niger and those who didn’t, the Nigerian President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, made a move to deploy Nigerian Special Forces illegally into Nigerien territory to enforce a ‘no-fly zone’ which is a euphemism for essentially staging an unprovoked military attack against an independent country and a friendly nation to Nigeria.
“As was expected, most people in the Nigerian government and in the Nigerian military and the citizenry at large, weren’t at all on board with this, but Mr. Tinubu was clearly desperate to start this war with Nigerien, a war that nobody wanted.
“Subsequently, a secret document was leaked to me, a document which contained basically attack instructions and basically staging plans for this illegal invasion of Niger. And I knew that by putting these documents out, I could potentially stop a catastrophic invasion which would lead to an immense and unnecessary loss of West African lives. So that’s exactly what I did.
“Early August, I put out these documents and we have had the desired effect. It did, in fact, stop the invasion. Subsequently, Mr. Tinubu then tried to seek permission from Nigeria’s Senate to deploy the Nigerian military in Niger, the Senate knocked this back, and to all intents and purposes, the invasion essentially became a stillbirth. It didn’t happen, which from the point of view, I think any right thinking person in the ECOWAS sub-region was definitely a good outcome.
“After I leaked this document, I was made aware from several sources that the Nigerian military establishment and the Nigerian intelligence establishment became essentially particularly enraged with me.
“So I have been a person of interest for a long time but with that, I became designated as something of an enemy of the states.
“Following a very unfortunate event in Zimbabwe, the Nigerian establishment knew who to speak to, if they wanted to get a hold of me. They were aware that I live in Ghana and that I use Ghanaian travel documents.
“So, I was informed that the Nigerian intelligence agency, I’m not sure whether it was the National Intelligence Agency or the Defence Intelligence Agency, but one of these foreign intelligence institutions dispatched a jet to Accra to basically have me illegally rendered to Nigeria.”
He said the government “wrote a letter to the Ghanaian government accusing me of apparently aiding terrorism by supposedly revealing the locations of soldiers and apparently, I was also guilty of treason, whatever that means.
“Now, it seemed as if the matter was going to end there but more recently, I have come to find out that the Tinubu government is still trying very hard to enact some sort of illegal rendition. So, the latest tactic apparently is to lean on the Ghanaian government and accuse me of having apparently sabotaged that coerced mission and in so doing, basically compromised the mission.
“The bloc security of the ECOWAS region, in which Ghana, being itself an ECOWAS member, is then obligated to cancel my asylum, to revoke my refugee status and to revoke my Ghanaian passport.
“The Nigerian government’s hope is that in revoking my passport, whatever travel privileges, or visa or residency privileges I enjoy anywhere in the world will be compromised and as a result, it will then be more possible for them using the various avenues that are available to obviously have somebody extradited or to have somebody illegally rendered.
“In this case, a journalist who fled the country because of his work and claimed political asylum in another country and has gained full refugee status. The Nigerian government obviously has no problem trying to flout international law in this way.
“The reason I’m making this appeal publicly to the Ghanaian government and to the individual is because this is an attempt to settle grudges using a sovereign country which is Ghana as a sort of blunt force to get out an individual.”
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