Sikiru Obarayese,

Gender: Male
Video Journalist

Around 1 p.m. on October 20, police instructed Obarayese, a reporter with the privately owned Daily Post newspaper, to leave the memorial demonstration moving through Oshogbo, the capital of Nigeria’s southwestern Osun state, the journalist told CPJ. Initially, Obarayese refused, but when he finished his filming and began to leave, an officer pushed him from behind and asked what he was doing. Obarayese said he asked to stop being harassed, and a Divisional Police Officer ordered the journalist be taken to a nearby police van, where at least six other officers beat him with their hands and guns as they forced him into the vehicle. The officers took his eyeglasses and Bluetooth headphones but allowed him to keep his phone as they drove him to the local Dugbe police station, Obarayese told CPJ. At the station, Obarayese was punched repeatedly in the face by an officer, and other officers threatened to kill him if he did not cooperate, but the journalist told CPJ it was unclear what the officers wanted him to do, according to Obarayese and a Daily Post report.

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