TheCable

Ahmad Salkida, the Nigerian journalist who was declared wanted by the army, has finally been arrested.

Security agents nabbed in Abuja on Monday, as he arrived from his base in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

He was declared wanted after the Boko Haram sect released a video of the abducted Chibok girls.

The army had issued a notice on Salkida, alongside Aisha Wakil, known as ‘Mama Boko Haram’, and one Ahmed Bolori, accusing them of having links to the sect, an allegation they all denied.

Wakil and Bolori had earlier turned themselves in.

Quoting a top intelligence source, The Nation said the Nigerian embassy in the UAE refused to renew Salikda’s passport, but issued him an Emergency Travel Certificate (ETC), which he used in travelling.

According to the paper, a service profile on Salkida indicated that his passport expired on August 16, and the dossier also claimed that Salkida’s residence permit in the UAE had also expired.

“After he was declared wanted by the Army, Salkida approached our mission in the UAE for the renewal of his passport to return to Nigeria to prove his innocence,” the paper quoted the source as saying.

“But based on security reasons, we said we could only oblige him ETC and he should come home to get a new travelling document.

“We also knew that his residence permit in the UAE had expired and we collaborated with relevant agencies to ensure that it is not renewed. We wielded diplomatic influence to prevent him from seeking political asylum under any guise.

“On Sunday, Salkida was granted the ETC by our embassy to come home and we started tracking his movement from the UAE. Upon arrival on the Emirates flight, he was arrested by the DSS, having been watch-listed by the army.”

Salkida hails from Borno state. He had previously worked for Daily Trust and Blueprint newspapers, with a strong focus on reporting terrorism in Nigeria.

Blueprint, it would be recalled, was the newspaper that published the picture of the suicide bomber that attacked the Nigeria Police Force headquarters in Abuja on June 16, 2011, narrowly missing the then inspector-general, Hafiz Ringim.

That was the first known case of suicide bombing in Nigeria.

According to Salkida, his first training as a reporter started with Insider Weekly, a newspaper in Abuja, back in 2001.

He got his job with the newspaper with a primary school certificate, and a bout of valuable information.

He was born into a Christian family, and said he was a Christian for a good part of his teenage years, before moving to “free-thinking” and converting to Islam in 1997.

Salkida is the only Nigerian journalist to have interviewed Mohammed Yusuf and Abubakar Shekau, leaders of the Boko Haram sect.

In one of his revelations, Salkida said Yusuf appeared excited to feature in a newspaper and mulled the idea of floating one himself.