Controversial journalist, David Hundeyin, has appealed to the Ghanaian President, Nana Akufo-Addo, not to allow the Nigerian government to repatriate him from Ghana.
Hundeyin, who is currently seeking asylum in Ghana, made the appeal in a video shared via his X account, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday night.
Before the 2023 general elections, the journalist had published an expose against the then All Progressives Congress (APC) flag bearer and current president, Bola Tinubu titled, ‘Bola Ahmed Tinubu: From Drug Lord To Presidential Candidate.’
Speaking in the newly released video, Hundeyin claimed that the Nigerian government was after him because he leaked a secret document on the plan of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to invade Niger Republic.
According to him: “I fled Nigeria in 2020 and I applied for asylum in Ghana in early 2021. In May 2022, I was granted refugee status in Ghana and subsequently I was also issued a Ghanaian refugee passport, which I have subsequently used extensively to travel across Africa and around the world.
“Last month, when there was the ongoing back and forth between those who wanted to go to war within the ECOWAS bloc against the coup regime in Niger something happened.
“The Nigerian president, Bola Tinubu made a move to deploy Nigerian Special Forces illegally into Nigerian territories to enforce a no fly zone which is a euphemism for essentially staging an unprovoked military attack against an independent sovereign nation and the friendly country to Nigeria.
“As was expected, most people in the Nigerian government and Nigerian military and in the citizenry at large, weren’t at all on board with this. But Tinubu was clearly desperate to start this war with Niger, the war that nobody wanted.
“Subsequently a secret document was leaked to me, a document which contained basically, attack instructions. Basically, staging plans for this illegal invasion of Niger. And I knew that by putting these documents out, I could potentially stop the catastrophic invasion which would lead to an immense and unnecessary loss of West African life. So that’s exactly what I did.
“Early August, I put out these documents and it had the desired effect. It did in fact stop the invasion. Subsequently, Tinubu then tried to seek permission from Nigeria’s Senate to deploy the Nigerian military to Niger. The Senate knocked this back and to all intents and purposes, the invasion essentially became a stillbirth, it didn’t happen.
“It would have been something that would have been catastrophic and would have benefited nobody except the President himself.
“Now, after I leaked this document, I was made aware from several sources that the Nigerian military establishment and Nigerian intelligence establishments became essentially particularly enraged with me. I’ve been a person of interest for a long time. But with that, I became designated as something of an enemy of states.
“As fortune or bad luck would have it, just the month before this happened…The fact that I do travel with the Ghanaian passport that I do travel with, I had become exposed to the public, through no fault of my own, following a very unfortunate event in Zimbabwe, after which the permanent secretary at the Zimbabwean Ministry of Information, probably thinking that he was scoring a point against some sort of foreign journalists, following issues with foreign journalists decided to tweet to a global audience the fact that I did claim asylum in Ghana, and that I travel with the Ghanaian travel documents. As a result of this, the Nigerian establishment knew who to speak to, if they wanted to get a hold.
“So I was informed that the Nigerian intelligence agency, I’m not sure whether it was the National Intelligence Agency or the Defense Intelligence Agency. But one of these foreign intelligence institutions dispatched a jet to Accra to basically have me illegally rendered to Nigeria.
“Apparently, they 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.
“It seemed as if the matter was going to end there. More recently, I’ve come to find out that the Tinubu government is still trying very hard to to enact some sort of illegal rendition. The latest tactic apparently is to lean on the Ghanaian government, and accused me of having apparently sabotage that ECOWAS mission and in so doing, basically compromised the bloc security of the ECOWAS region, in which case 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 documents hope is that in revoking my passports, whatever travel privileges or visa or residency privileges, I enjoy anywhere in the world will be will be compromised. And as a result, it will then be more possible for them using the various avenues that are available to obviously a nation state to have somebody extradited or somebody illegally rendered.”
While appealing to President Akufo-Addo, he said: “I want to urge the Ghanaian president to resist the temptation to allow an illegitimate Nigerian president to push Ghana into breaking international law. There is a law that forbids the illegal repatriation of political refugees back to the country that they fled from where they are going to face persecution.
“It’s very well known that if for whatever reason I were to be returned to Nigeria, I would not survive it. This is not a secret.”
Hundeyin has been surrounded in a web of controversies such as attacking revered Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka over the 2023 Presidential election.
Recently, he attacked a notable Nigerian publisher whom he accused of shielding the alleged drug case of President Tinubu.(Daily Trust)
