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| EMEKA OFFOR |
Nigerian Police are bitten
more nowadays than what they can chew!!! As an organisation, their main duty is
to protect the life's and properties of the citizenry,either poor or rich. To
maintain law and order without fair or favor.
However, that is not the
case of things in Nigeria....it is always riches take all...wet my palms and i
do your bid syndrome. If that is not the case, how was it that in his 21st
century,where things are just too open and news are no longer censured...that
Inspector-General of Police Mohammed Abubakar will be dancing to the beat of
money-missed road government contractor, Emeka Offor , who order the arrest of a
Nigerian citizen Comrade Bony Okowkwo , a social activist and businessman based
in South-Africa , at his Lagos home by a team of Special Anti-Robbery policemen
over comments he made against the shady
businessman.
Comrade Bonny Okonkwo was
arrested arrested by the police on Saturday, July 13, 2013, and
released after 18 days in solitary confinement onAugust 31 on the orders
of the Hon Kabir Lamido, the chief magistrate of Dutse Alhaji Court in Kubwa, a
satellite town in FCT, his passport has not been released to him.
According to a statement
from the Falana and Falana Chambers signed by Samuel Ogala .Policemen
reportedly sent from the police headquarters in Abuja handcuffed Bonny detained
him in several police formations in Lagos before driving him to Abuja in
the trunk of a police Prado vehicle for criticizing Offor in an online forum.
In the suit with motion
number M/10933/2013 filed today at the Federal Territory High Court at Jabi
with Mr Justice Afam Okeke presiding, Mr Falana, a Senior Advocate of
Nigeria (SAN), is demanding “compensatory damages suffered by Comrade Okonkwo
as a result of the breach of his fundamental rights to fair hearing, freedom of
speech, dignity of the human person, personal liberty and freedom of movement”.
Okonkwo’s problem began when he wrote an article in an online forum called “Mbala Obodo” which is dedicated to indigenes of Oraifite in Ekwusigo Local Government Area of Anambra State, where the activist suggested that the S1.3million recently donated to Rotary International for polio eradication by the businessman should have been channeled to poverty reduction in Offor’s Oraifite town or to the payment of poor people whose life savings deposited at Afex Bank owned by the businessman collapsed in 2006.
For
the almost three weeks Okonkwo was detained at the police station in Garki, he
was not given access to his two mobile telephones, international travel
passport and family members, says Adaeze Ekwueme, a member of the legal team
which secured the activist’s release who also disclosed that he was arrested
and charged with defamation based on a letter from Fortress Chambers in Lagos
signed on June 28, 2013, by one Godson Ugochukwu, said to be Offor’s lawyer.
“We are convinced that if Comrade Okonkwo’s fundamental right of freedom of speech which he exercised duly in his comment on the donation to Rotary International could be treated in any way as defamation, the police should not have been involved at all.
Says attorney Ogala: “Defamation has always been treated as a civil matter on our statute books, and not a criminal one. Also quite disheartening is the Gestapo-manner in which the police from the office of the Inspector General have acted in this matter.
“The deployment of a team of special federal anti-robbery policemen to effect the arrest of a harmless, innocent citizen gives the impression to all reasonable members of society that the police have allowed themselves to be used in this matter in a most unconscionable manner.
“Most amazing is that this crude and primitive blackmail and torture of a law abiding citizen under the leadership of IGP Abubakar who has on more than one occasion publicly warned his officers and men against behaving like barbarians, all the more so with the courts awarding huge damages against the police for the unpardonable public conduct of these security men.”
Quoting Nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka and George Mangakis, a leading Greek author who was detained in brutal circumstances during the military dictatorship in the South European nation, Ogala added: “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny’’
“We are convinced that if Comrade Okonkwo’s fundamental right of freedom of speech which he exercised duly in his comment on the donation to Rotary International could be treated in any way as defamation, the police should not have been involved at all.
Says attorney Ogala: “Defamation has always been treated as a civil matter on our statute books, and not a criminal one. Also quite disheartening is the Gestapo-manner in which the police from the office of the Inspector General have acted in this matter.
“The deployment of a team of special federal anti-robbery policemen to effect the arrest of a harmless, innocent citizen gives the impression to all reasonable members of society that the police have allowed themselves to be used in this matter in a most unconscionable manner.
“Most amazing is that this crude and primitive blackmail and torture of a law abiding citizen under the leadership of IGP Abubakar who has on more than one occasion publicly warned his officers and men against behaving like barbarians, all the more so with the courts awarding huge damages against the police for the unpardonable public conduct of these security men.”
Quoting Nobel prize winner Wole Soyinka and George Mangakis, a leading Greek author who was detained in brutal circumstances during the military dictatorship in the South European nation, Ogala added: “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny’’
“As if this step is not
enough to frustrate this businessman based in South Africa who is now
constrained to stay only in Nigeria”, complained lawyer Ekwueme, “the police
authorities have just transferred Okonkwo’s wife, who is a police officer, out
of Lagos, thus enhancing the widely held speculation that the police leadership
is in cahoots with Offor to deal a mortal blow to not just Comrade
Okonkwo but also his family”.
Hearing in the matter between citizen Okonkwo, on the one hand, and IGP Abubakar and Offor, on the other, will start on October 30.
Hearing in the matter between citizen Okonkwo, on the one hand, and IGP Abubakar and Offor, on the other, will start on October 30.
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