The Department of State Services released journalist Zainab Sodiq without charge on the night of Friday 10 July 2026, four days after detaining her at Lagos airport over an unmanned aerial vehicle found in her possession.
Zainab Sodiq, a journalist who reports on the activities of African Action Congress figure Omoyele Sowore, was released from the custody of the Department of State Services (DSS) without charge on the night of Friday, 10 July 2026. Her release was confirmed by multiple Nigerian news outlets and by a statement from Sowore.
Sodiq had been held since 6 July 2026, when DSS operatives and officials of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria intercepted her at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, as she prepared to board a flight to Abuja with an unmanned aerial vehicle (drone) in her possession.
The DSS said Sodiq did not possess the End User Certificate required for the drone and was accordingly held for further investigation. Sowore disputed this account, saying the drone belonged to him and alleging that Sodiq's detention was connected instead to her coverage of his court proceedings — including her recording, on 22 June 2026, of an encounter in which he alleges DSS officials physically harassed him inside a Federal High Court premises in Abuja. Both accounts remain allegations from the respective parties, and the underlying dispute over the reason for Sodiq's detention was not resolved by her release.
The DSS is Nigeria's principal domestic intelligence and internal security agency, with statutory powers to investigate matters of national security. Sodiq's detention and release fall within the agency's investigative and custodial functions. No charge was filed against her before her release, and no court appears to have been seized of her specific case during the period of her detention, based on the reporting reviewed.
Section 35 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) permits detention without charge only within defined limits, after which a suspect must be charged before a court or released. The reporting reviewed does not specify whether Sodiq was arraigned, granted bail, or held throughout the four days without a court appearance, and that detail is accordingly not settled here. What is established is the outcome: the detention concluded with release and no charge, rather than with arraignment.
Sowore is separately a defendant in an ongoing cybercrime and defamation prosecution. That matter is distinct from the reporting on Sodiq's detention and is referenced here only as context.
Ahead of the release, Amnesty International Nigeria, in a statement on 9 July 2026, called on the DSS to immediately and unconditionally release Sodiq, describing her continued detention as a violation of her rights and of press freedom. Amnesty said the circumstances of her arrest indicated she may have been targeted because of her work as a journalist, and that the stated reason for her detention appeared to be a pretext to prevent her from carrying out her professional duties. The organisation called on Nigerian authorities to investigate the circumstances of the arrest and detention "promptly, thoroughly, independently, impartially, transparently and effectively," and to end the use of arbitrary arrest and detention against journalists, activists and human rights defenders, Daily Post Nigeria reports.
Amnesty's statement preceded Sodiq's release by roughly a day. No source reviewed draws an explicit causal link between the statement and the DSS's decision to release her. Sowore, in his own statement announcing the release, attributed it to sustained pressure from Nigerians, civil society groups and lawyers generally, without singling out Amnesty's intervention as determinative.
The Committee to Protect Journalists had separately named Sodiq's detention among cases in a broader statement on the treatment of journalists in Nigeria, calling on authorities to end the harassment of journalists.
