http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/21/fuelling-poverty-documentary-nigeria_n_3126915.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1730423b=facebook
Wole Soyinka is featured in the film.
LAGOS, Nigeria — The documentary on a massive strike that
paralyzed life in Nigeria features newspaper headlines, television news
footage and other information widely known about a government gasoline
subsidy that saw billions of dollars stolen by greedy companies and the
nation's elite.
It also, according to Nigerian authorities, could spark violence and potentially threaten national security.
The 30-minute film called "Fuelling Poverty" has been online
for months, but only recently Nigerian officials have refused its
director permission to show it publicly in this oil-rich nation of more
than 160 million people. While free speech is enshrined in this
democratic nation's constitution, an ever-increasing drumbeat of
complaints and critical articles about the administration of President
Goodluck Jonathan has seen authorities increasingly target journalists
and others.
The film, sponsored by Soros Foundation's Open Society Justice
Initiative for West Africa, focuses on the protests around Jonathan's
decision to remove subsidies on gasoline in January 2012. Life in
Nigeria ground to a halt before unions backed down. Later, a report by
lawmakers demanded businesses and government agencies to return some
$6.7 billion over the subsidy program.
Ishaya Bako, who directed the film that features civil rights
activists and Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka, later applied for the
right to show the film publicly. In a letter dated April 8, Nigeria's
National Film and Video Censors Board told Bako that the documentary was
"prohibited for exhibition in Nigeria."
"I am further to inform you that this decision is due to the fact
that the contents of the film are highly provocative and likely to
incite or encourage public disorder and undermine national security,"
the letter signed by board lawyer Effiong Inwang reads. "Please you are
strongly advised not to distribute or exhibit the documentary film. All
relevant national security agencies are on the alert."
Tanko Abdullahi, a spokesman for the board, initially told The
Associated Press on Wednesday that the film wasn't banned, but was
"denied classification." Later, in the same conversation, he
acknowledged it couldn't be shown over unspecified "security issues."
"What is national security for Nigeria is different from that of the
U.S.A.," Abdullahi said. "We made that determination because of the
content of the film. That's why you have regulators."
The government's decision has seen more people watch the film online.
It also has sparked outrage from human rights activists and press
freedom groups.
"Instead of banning the documentary `Fuelling Poverty,' authorities
should look into the important questions it raises about corruption and
impunity in the country's oil sector and at the highest levels of
government," Mohamed Keita, an official with the Committee to Protect
Journalists, said in a statement. "We urge Nigeria's National Film and
Video Censors Board to overturn this censorship order."
The move to ban the film comes as Jonathan's government, which many
voted for believing he would change the engrained interests and
corruption of Nigeria's government, has grown increasingly unpopular as
extremists carry out bombings and the state-run power company cannot
offer stable electricity. During the strikes, government officials put
increasing pressure on broadcasters not to show images of protests,
which at one point saw tens of thousands in the streets of Lagos.
Today, journalists at a newspaper face forgery charges over a story
that claimed the presidency would try to disrupt opposition parties.
Security agencies have harassed reporters at a weekly newspaper that
wrote about abuses by the military in its crackdown against Islamic
extremists. And workers who ran a call-in radio show in the northern
city of Kano face charges over talking about rumors surrounding polio
vaccinations in the wake of at least nine women vaccinators being
killed.
Despite the outcry, however, the apparent crackdown continues, only
fueling more of the same apathy for Nigeria's government seen by those
featured in the documentary.
"We don't have government. It's a whole big banana republic," barber
Emmanuel Tom Ekin says in the film. "They've been coming telling us
story all the time, deceiving us. And right now, in our faces, they are
still deceiving us."
