Why a Nigerian woman faces jail time for reviewing tomato puree

On September 16, 2023, Chioma Okoli posted a review of the Nagiko tomato puree she bought at a street market in Sangotedo, Lagos, on her Facebook page.

She was telling the few thousand followers on her small-business page that it tasted more sugary than other products, asking those who had tried it what they thought.

The post received a diversity of opinions, but it reached a head when a Facebook user commented: “Stop spoiling my brother product, if [you] don’t like it, use another one than bring it to social media…”

Okoli responded, saying: “Help me advise your brother to stop ki**ing people with his product…” Two days later, the post had garnered more than 2,500 comments, to her surprise.

That Sunday, as she was stepping out of church with her husband, she was accosted by two men and one woman in plainclothes who said they were police officers, she said. They took her to the Ogudu police station still dressed in her church attire.

“They took me into one room, I sat down and they brought more than 20 pages and told me those are my charges. I had forgotten about the post, then I remembered,” the 39-year-old mother of three told Al Jazeera. “They were charging me with extortion, blackmailing and that I run a syndicate.”

Okoli is just one of several Nigerians who have been arrested, detained or charged for allegedly violating the country’s cybercrime laws [PDF], which are meant to secure critical national information as well as protect citizens from cyberstalking. But rights groups say more and more, it’s being used against journalists, activists, dissidents and even ordinary people publishing reports and expressing their freedom of speech.

The 2015 act was introduced to enhance cybersecurity but its broad, nebulous language has given the authorities and powerful people leeway to weaponise it against journalists and dissidents who speak truth to power, said Inibehe Effiong, a Nigerian activist and lawyer representing Okoli.

This February, the act was amended by the president following a 2022 ECOWAS court ruling directing the country to review it, stating that it is not in line with the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. One of the major changes was section 24, which was used to target dissidents on cyberstalking charges.

“It appears that the Nigerian police have not come to terms with the legal implications of the amendment,” Effiong said. “The import of it is that abusing someone on the internet is no longer a cybercrime, or a journalist carrying out his journalistic work cannot be criminalised or prosecuted.”

Even as the act has been reviewed, Anietie Ewang, the Nigeria researcher for Human Rights Watch, said it is still highly susceptible to manipulation by authorities.

“[This is] because the wording is vague and, as we know, the authorities have a way of using such provisions to fit their purpose. They have ways of interpreting citizens’ actions to be an intention to break down law and order or to threaten life,” Ewang said.

‘Coerced statement’

The day after Okoli’s arrest in Lagos, she was flown to the capital city Abuja to be interrogated at the headquarters of the police force, where she was held for a few days.

Eric Umeofia, the CEO of Erisco Food Limited, the company that produces Nagiko tomato puree, came to the station too. Okoli was brought to see him in an office where he shouted at her while she cried, she told Al Jazeera.

“He started shouting [saying], ‘so it was you that want to destroy my business of 40 years’,” she said, adding that he accused her of being paid by someone to destroy his business, while demanding that she name the person who paid her.

Umeofia also demanded an apology from Okoli, and that she post a public statement on her social media and in three national daily newspapers. The company also filed a civil lawsuit against Okoli seeking 5 billion naira (over $3m) in damages.

Okoli said she wrote a statement twice but both were rejected. She was asked to copy an already prepared confession statement.

“It was like a 100 people sitting on one person, asking him to do one thing,” she told Al Jazeera, saying she had no lawyer present. “I had to copy everything and give [it] to them and they accepted it. And they now released me to go after three days.”

On September 29, 2023, NAFDAC, Nigeria’s foods and drugs regulatory agency, said the sugar level in Nagiko puree is safe for human consumption.

Erisco, in a statement, said Okoli made a “malicious allegation” against the brand and it will use every lawful means to clear its name and reputation. The police have charged her with two counts of “instigating people against Erisco Foods Limited, knowing the said information is false”, and called for her to shut down a GoFundMe campaign page that was set up to support her legal defence after her case gained public sympathy.

Her lawyer has meanwhile filed a 500 million naira ($374,175) lawsuit against Erisco Foods Limited and the police.

During the ordeal, Okoli says she fell sick and her suckling baby also suffered after having been weaned prematurely because her arrest meant she could not breastfeed for days. Her small business’s Facebook page, through which she sells imported baby clothes, was hacked too.