Sahara Reporters ran a story claiming Nigeria’s secret police had arrested and detained Professor Okey Ndibe the moment he stepped off his flight from the United States. The piece suggested he was being held, feeding the usual narrative of harassment and heavy-handed government action.
The facts don’t match a word of it.
An inside source at the Department of State Services says the DSS never arrested or detained him. When Ndibe landed on 1 June at 11:30 a.m., officers pulled him aside for routine questioning at border control. They followed standard international procedures. The whole thing traced back to a Watch-List Action first opened on him in 2013 under President Jonathan. The current director-general of the DSS had ordered a review of all those old listings. Part of the process is to sit down with the people involved, clear up loose ends, and complete the delisting.
Ndibe left the airport less than thirty minutes later.
That timeline alone collapses the Sahara Reporters version. No arrest, no cell, no drawn-out detention—just a scheduled conversation that ended almost as soon as it started. The agency was closing the book on an outdated file, not opening a new one.
Sahara Reporters turned a bureaucratic formality into front-page drama. The gap between what they printed and what actually occurred is too wide to be an honest mistake. It looks like they ran with the most explosive angle before checking the simplest details. In the end the story doesn’t hold up. It’s a fabrication dressed up as reporting, and outlets that trade in this kind of rush job erode whatever credibility Nigerian journalism still has left. The public deserves better than headlines that melt the moment they touch the facts.
