Nigeria’s secret police, the Department of State Security Services, on Friday, 30 August, returned the seized passport of multiple-award winning investigative journalist Adejuwon Soyinka, blaming his arrest on “possible mistaken identity.”

Inibehe Effiong, human rights activist and public interest lawyer, accompanied Soyinka on a visit to the DSS office in Ikoyi, Lagos, on Friday to retrieve the seized passport.

Effiong says “the secret police’s decision to blame the whole incident on possible mistaken identity did not come to me as a surprise.”

Soyinka, two-time Emmy nominated investigative journalist and West Africa Regional Editor at The Conversation Africa, was arrested at the Murtala Muhammed International airport, shortly after arriving on a Virgin Atlantic flight from London, UK on Sunday, 25 August, 2024.

The pioneer editor of the BBC Pidgin Service was subsequently held and interrogated for about eight hours at both the DSS airport command and the agency’s Ikoyi office. He was later released on self recognisance while his passport was withheld.

The DSS’ first explanation for the arrest was that Soyinka’s name was placed on its watchlist on the request of an unnamed government agency. It later blamed the entire saga on a possible mistaken identity.