Sowore, Hundeyin, Adeyanju, others intensify efforts to free anonymous Twitter reporter PIDOM seized by Nigerian govt

Nigerian activists Omoyele Sowore, Deji Adeyanju and journalist David Hundeyin are making frantic efforts to secure the release of Twitter whistleblower PIDOM, believed to have been abducted by the Nigerian government since August 5.

PIDOM Nigeria is an anonymous Twitter user who regularly uses his account to publish confidential government documents in the public interest, to the chagrin of federal officials.

In July, PIDOM made some damning posts about a high-ranking traditional ruler, the Ooni of Ife, Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi. He accused the monarch of defrauding people in the U.S. of tens of thousands of dollars in a real estate investment scam.

PIDOM posted documents to substantiate the claim, but Ooni’s supporters deemed them to be fake. Mr Ogunwusi himself also denied the allegations.

Last October, PIDOM published a State House document that exposed how President Bola Tinubu’s administration lavished hundreds of thousands of dollars on hotel reservations at the UN General Assembly in New York. The document sparked a nationwide outrage that the government was squandering the nation’s limited resources on five-star hotels while citizens were asked to endure a torrid economy for a better future.

The whistleblower, who operated mainly on Twitter, also posted classified police signals to expose internal wrongdoing and wranglings in the security force.

Mr Hundeyin first published the news of PIDOM’s abduction on his Substack website, asserting he was picked up in Port Harcourt on August 5 and has been given an administrative bail with conditions that were nearly impossible to meet.

PIDOM had left explicit instructions for Mr Hundeyin —the only person he was following on Twitter— to take over his Twitter account in the event of an arrest, according to the journalist’s account who said he was furnished with PIDOM’s login details by someone posing to be PIDOM’s associate but whose ties to the whistleblower he couldn’t yet verify.

AAC presidential candidate Omoyele Sowore told Peoples Gazette that individuals reached out to him that PIDOM was being held at the Police FCID in Garki, Abuja and that efforts were underway to secure his release.

Meanwhile, last week, the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, parroted a seizure of $37 million from cryptocurrency accounts, whose owners, he claimed, sponsored the dayslong #EndHunger demonstrations against Mr Tinubu’s administration.

One of PIDOM’s two crypto accounts — pinned on his Twitter account to solicit donations to fund his investigative reports —  was among the four accounts that Mr Ribadu said had been seized.

The security chief claimed persons looking to undermine Mr Tinubu were behind the protest, leading him to expose their financial dealings, Mr Ribadu said.

But checks made showed that wallet  TGVCWYLdeCyjmSpojd4n7hqfJp2ucwuGAx, which the government listed as having purportedly been used to fund protests, only had N273,000 (or about $175) in it. The wallet was the same one in PIDOM’s pinned post on Twitter.

The government’s claim that it found $37 million in the crypto wallet TB37WWozkkenGVYWD7Do2N5WT2CedqDktJ was found to be extremely misleading. The Gazette tracked the wallet and found nothing in it. Not only was there no money in the wallet, the wallet had never been used to conduct any transactions in the past.

The police did not return a request for comment on PIDOM’s arrest as activists intensified calls for his release.

Netizens have continued to mock the authorities for expending scarce government resources, and manpower meant to track bandits and other criminal elements to bully everyday citizens in the civic space.