EXCLUSIVE: Wanted at Home Our Q&A Interview with the Most Wanted Man in Nigeria Reporter David Hundeyin

The freedom of the press cannot be taken for granted at home or abroad. Nigeria claims to be a democratic society to the rest of the world. However, actions in the past few years are showing that to be a fallacy at best or part of a larger effort to stifle those who dare criticize the way Nigeria’s government operates, which would make it a dictatorship at worst. Two weeks ago, award-winning investigative reporter David Hundeyin was declared a wanted man by the Nigerian government. The government claims it is regarding sensitive national security information regarding cybercrimes that took place with Hundeyin being a co-conspirator. Hundeyin says it is nothing more than a desperate act by the administration of President Bola Tinubu, who is believed by many in Nigeria to have stolen an election with the help of the country’s highest court. Hundeyin exposed Tinubu for his questionable past participation in a drug cartel he belonged to here in the United States, based off of FBI and CIA documents he acquired through the Freedom of Information Act. Hundeyin spoke exclusively with Jcoydenreports after the warrant was issued for his arrest. That interview is being presented here in three parts.

The regime in Nigeria is apparently starting to become more frustrated with your actions online, the books you’ve published and all of the things you have been doing to expose them for who they are and what they are doing. You are now allegedly a threat to the national security of Nigeria. How do you respond to that?

I think it just goes to show you the extent to which the regime, I don’t refer to it as a government, feels brittle and threatened by absolutely everything. That is something that is born out of the basic insecurity in knowing that you did not win a basic mandate. The people didn’t want you. I’m not even talking about the election was rigged, this is just based on the official figures that supposedly brought Bola Tinubu into power. The official vote count puts it at 37%. That is by far the most unpopular person to ever occupy the presidency of Nigeria and he knows it. He knows nobody wants him there. He knows that with 2027 coming up, everyone is basically looking for ways to get him the hell outta there. The only reason he is there is because the opposition was divided last year. He knows that nobody takes him serious in that seat. As far as he is concerned, how to consolidate power is to do exactly what he is doing. Violence can be bought and used. I fall into a certain category and so here we are.

Were you surprised when they made this announcement that you were a wanted man?

Unfortunately, I wasn’t. I wanted to be positively surprised that they wouldn’t do this whole charade that I had predicted in my writing that they were going to do. But they just couldn’t resist it. It’s just their nature.

What agency in particular do you think is responsible for this?

I suspect these are Nigerian intelligence people, and I use the word “intelligence” loosely, trying to rope me into something that I shouldn’t be in. I went public with it when the whistleblower went missing and then someone using his account showed up in my inbox. I suspected then who it was. There was line in a post I made where I wrote, the expensive surveillance technologies that these guys buy from Asia are only matched in their total absolute lack of purpose. A Japanese Samurai ceremonial tanto for instance, an ornamental dagger that is not used in actual warfare. It’s a party piece. These guys will spend millions buying that thing and using it to cut meat in the kitchen. That’s just how they are. That’s the level they think on. So, I kind of expected that they wouldn’t be able to resist this cheap opportunity to rope me into some bullshit and they took it. The entire purpose of this is to make my life just a little more difficult. By claiming that I’m a suspect they have put my name on all sorts of watchlists and checklists outside the country. It is not going to stop me from living my life. It is not going to stop me from traveling. It means that when I get to the airport, where I already have an extra five minutes compared to what everyone else has because of my citizenship situation, this is just going to add another five minutes onto that. It will turn a minor inconvenience into a moderate one. When you are that petty and small, I guess making the life of a journalist. who is forced to live in exile just a little bit more difficult, is a victory to them.

American journalists did news segments a few months ago about rogue governments, mainly Russia and China, using the INTERPOL system to put the names of people being politically persecuted on it. You seem to now be a victim of that. What is it like for you to travel? How are other nations and governments around the world treating you since Nigeria has made you this boogeyman?

I’ll give you a scenario. You get to an airport and the kiosk with the immigration tech. The normal procedure is you hand them your passport, take off your glasses, they ask you a couple of questions and you’re on your merry way. In my case it is always they look at me, they look at the passport. They look back at me, they look at the passport again, because mine is a different kind of passport since it is a refugee passport and many of the agents are not familiar with what they look like until I show up. Then tap-tap-tap on the computer. Look at me, look back at the monitor. Then tap-tap-tap again. Start asking me a bunch of questions. Then tap-tap-tap again. Then sometimes, if I’m really unlucky, I get led away into the proverbial little white room and then I get searched. That has happened a couple of times. They completely search everything, my bags, they pat me down and then eventually they let me go. But on one occasion last year when I was traveling to Zimbabwe… I ended up in detention for eight hours. It was a ridiculous sequence of events. What they wrote on my passport was refused entry, but that has only happened once. Then there is the strip-searching, which is not very common but it does happen now and then.

With the Nigerian police doing this press conference earlier this month calling for your arrest and there now being international press being given to your situation, what are they so afraid of about you exposing?

Well, I guess the number one thing in the context of Nigeria, the expectation is that when someone goes after bad actors like I do, that there is someone or something motivating it. So maybe there is some political rival or business rival or grudge motivating it. Once they can identify what the thing is and neutralize it, then the whole thing kind of falls apart. That is how it works as a rule in Nigeria.

But I present something they are completely unfamiliar with and that is one who has ideological convictions. That is a luxury in that part of the world. The mindset of the ruling class is that these people are way too poor to afford or to believe in anything, or to act in accordance’s with what they claim to believe in. But here they have me, who is clearly not poor, and is willing to go ahead with his convictions. I come from a social-economic stratum, which is very close to the stratum of the supposed political elite. In more than a few cases, their kids went to school with me. I’m on first-name terms with some of these politicians’ kids. We’ve dated each other in a couple of cases. I’m not some rank outsider who can be treated as if there is no consequence. My family is very much a part of the establishment, which makes me very inconvenient to deal with. I have people who I share a surname with who sit in all sorts of important positions, even in the ruling party. Someone who has my surname and then is even more visible than the other family members and is visible for being this rather anti-establishment person who is trying to burn it all down. They really don’t know how to deal with that.

So they think you are dangerous to their way of life?

The danger in their view is what I represent, my continued defiance existence shows people that actually there is another way. It is possible to be different. Part of what keeps Nigeria the way that it is, is a cultural thing that people are just convinced that this is just how Nigerians behave and that this is just the way it is. Nobody is ever able to question why this is the way it is. Just by existing as I do, my existence is proof that you can be different. That you can turn down inducements. That you can with honest work, live well. Part of the frustration in all of this is that anyone who tries to be some honest, social-crusading journalist in that part of the world, is expected to take some sort of vow of poverty. I’m very much aseptic. I move visually striking of what you are expecting your pious journalist to look like. I wear jewelry. I dress flamboyantly. I have body art. I’m not shy to flex my social status quite regularly. They are seeing something that comes from one set of expectations but the product coming out of this visual sight is something that comes from a completely different set of expectations that they are familiar with. By just existing, unbeknownst to me, I’m potentially, maybe fueling some sort of political and social shift in Nigeria, especially with the median age (19.3) being as young as it is. With 40 percent of the people in Nigeria under the age of 15. So, it is a young and very impressionable country where you have an establishment of people who are between the ages of 60 and 90 trying to keep control of it.

And then you come along (laughing)?

Exactly. Then here I come, a guy in my mid-thirties, who is just as utterly rebellious in every way possible. I’ve been divorced twice. There is no part of me that conforms to how a Nigerian should act, or look, or be like right? Despite all of this, I’m not trying to be an American-immigrant type. I’m not trying to go to Detroit to become an African-American. There are a bunch of people like that. I am very much a Nigerian, who even though I don’t live there, I’m very much invested in Nigeria. I’m active in Nigerian public space, so it creates potentially a set of expectations in the minds of the youngsters who makeup the majority of the population that maybe it is possible to be different. If you are from the political class, then I can see why you would see that as a threat and why you would see such a person as a threat who needs to be eliminated.

In Part II of “Wanted at Home” our one-on-one interview with David Hundeyin, he discusses the toll his persecution by the Nigerian government is taking on himself and his family. He also goes into detail about what his relatives think of his actions.