Lanre Arogundade, Executive Director of the International Press Centre (IPC), was on Thursday arrested by officials of the Department of State Services (DSS) for unstated reasons.

Arogundade was returning from The Gambia after facilitating a training programme on Conflict Reporting for Journalists when he was arrested on arrival at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport.

Speaking with FIJ, Arogundade expressed bitterness over his arrest, lamenting that it had become a recurring event.

“Anytime I am going in or out, I am subjected to this ordeal,” he said. “And it is embarrassing because it makes people look at me like a criminal.”

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Agrogundade said the most senior of the DSS officials eventually said it was a case of mistaken identity and it happens when some names are similar.

“He was just saying things that don’t add up,” he said.

“I was in the custody of the DSS for about an hour. I took a picture of myself and it occurred to me to snap their office. An officer took my phone, saying that I was illegally filming them. I told him I only snapped the office because I had to let people know my current location. The Assistant Director of DSS then took my phone.”

Arogundade eventually regained his freedom, but not until the intervention of Mustapha Isah, President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.

“I got a call and the DSS official it could be my wife; it turned out to be the President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE),” said Arogundade, a former president of National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).

“The NGE President told me to allow him speak with the DSS and they spoke for a lengthy period. The DSS officer eventually said I should take my passport, but Initially I refused; I told him this has to stop. I got to their office around after 4pm and I didn’t leave till around past 5pm.

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Arogundade confirmed that he was similarl embarrassed by the agency on Sunday when he was leaving for The Gambia.

“They told me to leave the line, collected my passport, and asked me all kinds of questions. I asked them questions and one of them said ‘they wouldn’t even know you are a comrade’.

“On another occasion, I was travelling. They were talking to one another and passing my passport, I barely got o the flight before the boarding closed. There’s no time I am travelling that it doesn’t happen. and it really has to stop!”