A lawyer, Festus Ogwuche, on Monday wrote to the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, over a subsisting judgment of the ECOWAS Court of Justice, that forbids the Nigerian government from infringing on rights to free press.

Mr Ogwuche wrote Mr Malami on Monday in the wake of the federal government’s indefinite suspension of the operations of Twitter, a popular microblogging site, in Nigeria.

He reminded Mr Malami in his letter submitted to Mr Malami’s office on Monday that the ban on Twitter was in defiance of a 2018 judgment of the ECOWAS Court guaranteeing free press.

In an effort to enforce the ban, which has been widely condemned locally and internationally as an attack on free press and freedom of expression, Mr Malami had on Saturday, ordered the prosecution of those who continued to use Twitter in defiance of its suspension by government.

On Monday, the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) ordered televisions and radio stations to stop using Twitter.

But citing the ECOWAS Court judgment in his letter, Mr Ogwuche said the suspension of Twitter “is not a veiled attempt, but rather a direct unveiled advancement towards limiting the frontiers for the exercise of those constitutionally sacred freedoms by constricting and actually scrapping a vital platform and space for such expression.”

‘Official policy must not impede free press’
According to Mr Ogwuche, the ECOWAS Court of Justice had in December 2018, gave an “order of perpetual injunction,” which, “forbids the Federal Republic of Nigeria from doing anything either by way of official policy, instruction and/or investigation that will in anyway impede on the existence and operations of a free press in a democratic society.”

The lawyer who was the plaintiff in the ECOWAS Court case against the Federal Republic of Nigeria, noted that the order of injunction issued in the judgment applies to all subsequent violations of those enshrined rights including potential victims who may not necessarily be named in the law suit.

In the letter which he copied the Minister of Information and Culture as well as the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), he said these rights are not only entrenched and guaranteed in the Nigerian constitution, but also under the African Charter on Human Rights, the Universal Declaration Of Human and Peoples Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Elections.