In the regime’s eyes, he says, Temple was considered a “very radical newspaper.”

“The military is not interested in press freedom. It’s not interested in freedom at all. They didn’t want any questions,” he says. “That runs against what journalism is supposed to be because you as the journalist want to ask questions. You can’t do that without being labeled ‘radical.’”

Stigmatized by the “radical” label and even faced with threats of arrest, Temple staffers like Adio kept the paper afloat—campaigning for democracy by working underground.

“If you carry a story that they don’t like, even if your newspaper is not banned, they will seize the copies,” he says. “And they will come to your office and shut it down. Or even arrest your printer.”

“[Temple] had a mobile office,” he adds. “You’d just find out that the newspaper would come out despite the offices being closed.”

A Critical Eye

Even as one who spent years critiquing his government, Adio says he’s not about to play the role of crusading journalist just for the sake of appearing radical.

“I will not take sides and I will criticize everybody,” he says. “You had the military guys on one side and the pro-democracy people on the other side. Each of them needed to be put in their place.”

For Adio, many crusading journalists undermined their own ability to report the news.

“They boxed themselves into a corner such that they couldn’t even get news from the government,” he says. “What you want to do as a journalist is that you want to have access to everybody. You have to have the facts and you have to argue from the facts.”

A voice acknowledged by both opposition and government leaders, Adio built his reputation a respected critic—earning national awards three consecutive years in the mid-1990s.

In 1995, he transferred to This Day, the leading independent newspaper in Lagos, which had until recently been Nigeria’s capital city. And not long after that, he was on his way across the Atlantic.

Coming to America

In 1997, as global opposition to Abacha’s rule mounted, This Day opened an office in New York so it could cover the overseas opposition. According to Adio, Nigerians in Britain and the U.S. brought a fervor to their protest that took advantage of their greater press freedoms.

“The things that people couldn’t say in Nigeria, they could say here,” he recalls. “At that point [Abacha] was totally deranged. He was either killing people or putting them in jail.”