Nosa Igiebor

In 1998, Nosa Igiebor and the staff of Tell magazine as a whole were awarded the Special Award for Human Rights Journalism Under Threat at the Amnesty International UK Media Awards. The award's notice stated; "Tell has continued to publish throughout the period of Nigerian dictatorship despite intimidation, harassment and the detention without charge or trial of Mr Igiebor and other senior members of the Tell staff."

Igiebor was put in solitary confinement and denied access to his family, lawyer, and medical care. On 8 January 1996, the Federal High Court in Lagos ordered that Igiebor's wife, Harit Igiebor, should be allowed to visit her husband to give him some needed medication, but when she visited the jail the following day, she was denied access. Later that month, the government announced that Igiebor would be charged under "Decree 2 of 1984 for acts prejudicial to state security".

The Committee to Protect Journalists launched a letter-writing campaign demanding his release, as did Amnesty International. The latter organisation also designated him a prisoner of conscience. He continued to be held incommunicado for a total of more than six months, until 24 June 1996, when he was released along with six other political detainees.

The government responded with a campaign of harassment and imprisonment of the magazine's staff, as well as journalists from other publications, leading the Committee to Protect Journalists to issue a report describing the Nigerian independent press as in "deep crisis". In March 1995, George Mbah, the magazine's assistant editor, was arrested and jailed on a charge of "attempting to stage a military coup", and was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment by a secret military tribunal.

Tell published articles critical of the government and military, causing the magazine's relationship with military ruler Ibrahim Babangida to become increasingly strained. In April 1993, when the magazine featured an interview with retired General Olusegun Obasanjo as its cover story, the government confiscated 50,000 copies of Tell and the staff was forced to go into hiding. They continued to publish as a tabloid, however, becoming "the first of Nigeria’s Guerrilla tabloids of contemporary times".

On 12 June 1993, Babangida annulled the results of the nation's presidential election after opposition candidate Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola was victorious. General Sani Abacha then seized power in a coup as Nigeria's new president.

In 1993, the Committee to Protect Journalists presented Igiebor their International Press Freedom Award, "an annual recognition of courageous journalism". Bill Orme, an editor of CPJ, commented: "What distinguished Nosa is that he is still producing and his organisation (Tell) is still reporting the news in a very lively and combative way".

In 1991, Igiebor co-founded the independent news magazine Tell and became its editor-in-chief. Like Igiebor, most of Tell's journalists came to the magazine from Newswatch, after its editor Dele Giwa was killed by a letter bomb and its editorial policies became consequently less daring.

Nosa Igiebor (born 25 December 1952) is a Nigerian journalist and editor. In 1993, he won the International Press Freedom Award of the Committee to Protect Journalists for his magazine Tell's coverage of Sani Abacha's military rule.