Two days ago the Federal Capital Territory authorities evicted an elderly judge fromhis grace-and-favour home in an upmarket area of Abuja.
They kicked him out on the street with all his belongings, locked up the house and put it under guard.
Shehu one of the most experienced reproters went down there to speak to the man, Justice Bashir Sambo. He said he'd paid for the house after he retired, but the FCT minister wrote to him saying the house had been offered to him by mistake, and they needed it for another person.
It looked like a straight case of cheating. Justice Sambo said he had not been refunded the money that he paid.
The copy, as I saw it said: "Officials at the FCT ministry said the minister was too busy to comment on this matter". I didn't think much of this, as public relations officers in Nigeria will do anything to avoid relating to the public.
I was told by the publicity man at the Central Bank that "I had really ruined his evening" by calling at 6 pm. Many have simply slammed the phone down as soon as they hear I'm from a newspaper. Public relations officers must be the best paid people in Nigeria because when we try to get hold of them, their colleagues allways tell us "they have travelled out of the country".
So I let it through.
Any other journalist I would have questioned closely on exactly what they said to the authorities. Many come back and say "they would not comment", but when you question them it turns out they haven't actually spoken to anyone.
The FCT sent a press release saying they had paid back the money in three bankers drafts. They gave numbers and dates. They said they paid it to an agent acting for the Judge. They also said he had broken the rules of being sold the house, because he had sold it in order to pay the final instalment of the payments he had to make.
Of course once they had agreed to sell the house, they should have honoured the contract, it was their error. And to throw out a elderly man who has dedicated his life to serving the judiciary is intolerable. But we could have brought out these points in the story a day earlier.
The CEO was not pleased. "We need two people working on these kind of stories." And he's right, but I got irritated, because I've come to know how difficult to get hold of people when you're in the Nigerian press. An old Nigeria hand at the High Commission told me "Oh thats rubbish, its just crappy reporters making excuses." She said she never had that problem, but she's a diplomat.
I think if they do refuse to comment we should say so, and not allow them to kill the story just by stonewalling us. But the point is that by their press release they even hang themselves.
The reporter told me he went to the office of the special adviser on media, and it was locked. He asked some of the other people in the office and they said they didn't know when the minister would be around. My heart sank when he told me this.
"But you must understand" the reporter said, "these people smetimes put the phone down when we call." But this time you didn't even bother. "The BBC Hausa service did the same as us". That doesn't matter. I couldn't get through to the reporter to make him see that what he had done was wrong. The only thing I could say was that he had misled me and the reader by saying he had spoken to officials, and made them aware of the nature of his query.
The fatalism of not getting in touch with the authorities runs deep, and is starting to affect me. I don't want to come into contact with the authorities, because of their ability to stymie things, simply by putting the phone down. the frustration gets into you like dirt, rubbed in and hard to remove.