Luka Binniyat, freelance reporter with Epoch Times, a US-based newspaper, and spokesman of the Southern Kaduna Peoples Union (SOKAPU), is in detention in Kaduna.

Binniyat was arrested on November 4, 2021, and has been away from his wife and six children ever since. His offence was reporting killings and the government’s failure to secure lives in Southern Kaduna.

In an interview with Punch, Gladys, his wife, said he left the house as he normally would on any work day but never returned. By morning the next day, his colleagues at SOKAPU showed up to break the news of his arrest.

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“With their visit, I knew something was wrong. I asked them if my husband had an accident, they said no. They kept quiet; I asked if (Kaduna State Governor Nasir) El-Rufai had arrested him again, they said yes. Since then we have been doing all our best to get him out of custody,” she was quoted to have said.

This was not the first time Binniyat was arrested. In July 2017, as Gladys recalled, he was detained for over 100 days and released on October 16 the same year.

Gladys wondered why Samuel Aruwan, Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs in Kaduna and Southern Kaduna native, was orchestrating her husband’s arrest.

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“Why this is surprising is that Samuel Aruwan, the Commissioner for Internal Security and Home Affairs in Kaduna State, who ordered his arrest, is from the same Southern Kaduna my husband hails from and he was a journalist before he got his appointment with the government. He ordered my husband’s arrest because of a report he did on the killings in the same Southern Kaduna he hails from,” she said.

Some of Binniyat’s work can be found here, here and here. Since his arrest, he has been charged with cyberstalking and denied bail.