Ibrahim ‘IBD’ Dende Egungbohun, the Ogun-based smuggler-turned-businessman, has petitioned Kayode Egbetokun, the Inspector General of Police (IGP), over his indictment in FIJ’s latest investigation, titled ‘Undercover as a Smuggler’.

According to Premium Times, which shared the contents of Egungbohun’s petition on Monday, Dende also petitioned the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and Arise Television over FIJ’s investigation.

Last week, FIJ had released the trailer of an undercover investigation on smuggling by ‘Fisayo Soyombo, its founder and editor-in-chief, and followed it up with a multimedia story on Wednesday and a 16-minute documentary on Thursday.

Among many other things, FIJ’s story had unveiled how smuggling is aided by Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) bosses who take bribes from smugglers and then betray patrol teams by updating smugglers on their colleagues’ itinerary.

It also spotlighted the criminal business history of Ilaro’s biggest smuggler Ibrahim Dende Egungbohun — whose allies in power include Bashir Adewale Adeniyi MFR, the current Comptroller-General of Customs (CGC), and President Bola Tinubu — in the cross-border movement of goods and arms and ammunition.

However, Premium Times is reporting that Ola Folalu, Egungbohun’s counsel from Law Fix chambers, told the IGP in his petition that FIJ’s ‘Undercover as a Smuggler’ amounted to “character assassination with calculated view to achieve damaging effects against IBD Dende and his businesses within and outside Nigeria”.

READ MORE: Undercover as a Smuggler

“The claims in the report were designed for the purpose of causing inconvenience, danger, criminal intimidation, enmity, and hatred against him [Egungbohun],” Folalu was quoted as saying.

“The said broadcast/documentary is manifestly falsehood, preoccupied with criminal resentment and hatred neither warranted, necessary, proper nor justified against our client.

“Arise TV went ahead to transmit, circulate and allow its anchors to maliciously comment on same to its national and international audience and community, insinuating that our client is a gun runner and notorious.

“More disturbing is also the fact that your media house failed to verify the accuracy of the said documentary, as it relates to our client before accepting the same for broadcast hook, line and sinker.”

READ ALSO: Force Headquarters Detains ‘Fisayo Soyombo Over Story Exposing High-Level Police Corruption

Folalu’s letter continued: “This documentary is indefensibly false and malicious, yet, your media house gave a platform to unverified and potentially defamatory content, especially when it comes to an individual’s reputation and integrity.

“In the meantime, to affirm the right of our client against your defamatory publication/broadcast, we demand that you confirm to us, within 24 hours of receipt of this letter, an apology and your retraction of the said broadcast/documentary by responding to this letter.

“Note also that we are claiming damages of Five Hundred Million Naira (N500,000,000.00) from your media house for the expressly defamatory broadcast in issue.”

The petition also called on the NBC to “investigate and sanction Arise TV/Arise Media Group for its deliberate, unethical and irresponsible broadcast.”

READ ALSO: Benin Republic Arrests FIJ Editor Damilola Ayeni, Labels Him A ‘Jihadist’

Premium Times, the platform that gave vent to Dende’s petition to the IGP, neither contacted FIJ for its reaction nor gave any space to the substance of FIJ’s investigation.

Curiously, Premium Times understands — and it has itself been a victim of — the abuse of power in the action of using the IGP’s office to hound journalists instead of filing a legal suit.

In August 2018, the police briefly detained Musikilu Mojeed, Premium Times’ editor-in-chief; and Azeezat Adedigba, its education correspondent. They held on much longer to Samuel Ogundipe, its security reporter, asking him to reveal the source of one of his stories.

When Ogundipe, who is now the Publisher of Peoples Gazette, did not budge, the Force Headquarters sensationally claimed that he was “being investigated and prosecuted for the offences of theft and unlawful possession of restricted and classified documents inimical to state/national security”. Elsewhere, the police also claimed he had broken into the Force Headquarters to obatin the documents.

This is not the first time the office of the IGP has been sent after FIJ for its journalism.

In December 2021, Soyombo was detained at the Force headquarters, Abuja, on the orders of the then IGP after a similar petition, and was only released after media outcry.

Back then, FIJ had exposed how, in his former role as Commissioner of Police in charge of Budget and Finance at the Nigeria Police Force Headquarters, Joseph Egbunike, head of the police internal panel probing Abba Kyari’s indictment in an FBI report on fraud conspiracy, joined other police chiefs to approve more than N1billion for sham police transit camps project in Benue, Bauchi, Plateau, Katsina and Kano states, with FIJ’s visit to the project locations revealing that nothing or little had been done — three years later.