LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Two journalists have been killed in Nigeria in different attacks amid continuing unrest in Africa's most populous nation, authorities said Saturday.
Journalist Enenche Akogwu, who worked as a correspondent in Kano for private news station Channels Television, was shot and killed Friday while reporting on coordinated attacks there claimed by the radical Islamist sect known as Boko Haram, colleagues said. Akogwu had shown up after a bombing and began filming a crowd gathered there, not knowing they were armed sect members, colleagues said.
Akogwu, 31, joined Channels Television as a reporter in Nigeria's capital Abuja in 2010 before being assigned to Kano, the station said.
"My love for Nigeria has been a compelling impetus charting the course of my life — courageous in the face of adversities, hopeful when confronted with despair and delighted when the society makes appreciable progress," the station quoted Akogwu as once saying.
Meanwhile, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said a news editor for a government-owned radio station called Highland FM in the restive central Nigerian city of Jos was found dead in a shallow stream Thursday. Colleagues of Nansok Sallah, 46, believe he was murdered, the committee said.
Sallah previously worked for private radio station Cool FM in Abuja and Plateau State Radio and Television, the committee said.
"We mourn the death of Nansok Sallah and extend our condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues," said Mohamed Keita, the committee's Africa Advocacy Coordinator. "Authorities in Jos must pursue all leads in tracking his killer and bring those responsible to justice."
While Nigeria has an unruly free press, journalists have been attacked and killed in the oil-rich nation over their reporting in the past. In October, Zakariya Isa, a journalist for the state-run Nigerian Television Authority, was killed by Boko Haram gunmen in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, allegedly over stories he filed.
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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
