Nigeria Under President Buhari Running A Regime Of Secrecy - Reuben Abati.

Former spokesman to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, Reuben has stated that Nigeria is running ” a regime of secrecy” under the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

This was stated by Abati while speaking in Lagos on Thursday at the launch of a report by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), titled “Something to Hide?: Media Freedom Under Siege in Nigeria”.

Abati, who compared the present administration to the military era, expressed concern over what he described as the restriction of freedom happening under the Buhari government.

“People are embarrassed, because despite the fact that the democratic dispensation is supposed to expand the civic space and the scope of freedom — since we have in office persons who have sworn an oath to defend and protect the Constitution — it is the same persons that are violating the constitution and restricting the scope of human freedom,” he said.

“We are running a regime of secrecy, and if you’ve been in government like I had, the mindset there is that there is something they call ‘the need to know’. So, government officials determine what they think you should know. That itself defeats the objective of an open society, of an open government.