Gratuitous military, SSS assault on the press

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IN an unprecedented assault on the press, not seen since the dark days of military dictatorship, soldiers and State Security Service personnel fanned out across the country on Friday morning to intercept, seize and, in some cases, destroy newspapers as they were being distributed. The brazen assault on press freedom signposts the rapid descent of a discredited government and its security agencies into undisguised tyranny.

They will not succeed. Nigerians and the press have endured and triumphed over tyrannical forces – colonial and home-grown, military and civilian – and this latest violence to our cherished freedoms will certainly not be different.