Dear JK.Gadzama,
The following is NOPRIN’s preliminary reaction to your Press Release on the case of Oni Adeyemi:
Contrary to your assumption, NOPRIN did not just rely on media information; we interviewed journalists and representatives of the NHRC who brought Adeyemi to court on that day. This is different from your own case in which your only source of information about what happened on that day was from the same FCT police that are responsible for desecrating the temple of justice by snatching Adeyemi from the custody of the NHRC officials.
The questions begging for urgent answers are:
1. Why did the police arrest/re-arrest Adeyemi only after he resisted inducement (by rejecting 2 million naira) from Barrister Ozioko, of your chambers, and after he refused to testify for the prosecution?
2. Why did the police prepare and file criminal charges against Adeyemi after he refused to testify in favour of the prosecution, and after he revealed that Barrister Ozioko offered him a bribe of 2 million naira as an inducement to testify in favour of the prosecution? If he had danced to your (police and prosecution) tune, would he still have been charged?
3. Why have Prosecution Counsel and the Police kept Adeyemi’s whereabouts secret from his family members, legal representation and other concerned Nigerians? Is this what you mean by ‘diligent prosecution’?
We suspect that the intentions are
1. to prevent journalists, lawyers and human rights activists from accessing and interviewing Adeyemi, so that his own side would not be heard, and
2. that after sometime, if no one asks questions, Adeyemi will be ‘wasted’?
The allegations by the press about the role played by the police and the prosecution counsel are not ‘unfounded’, as you claim. NOPRIN did not make ‘unnecessary heavy weather’ of the allegations. We did not just rely on the reports by the press. We verified our information from witnesses, including journalists and officials of the NHRC. Al the journalists who were present and wrote reports about what happened on the day that the police abducted Adeyemi were unanimous in their report.
By invading the court premises, the police desecrated the sanctity of the hallowed precincts of the court, the chambers of justice.
We need you to answer if it was right for the police to have arrested Adeyemi within the court premises. We recall that sometime last year, the Senate protested when the police arrested someone from the National Assembly premises, whom the Senate had invited to testify during a public hearing.
All the witnesses in court on that day confirmed that the police shot in the air to scare away lawyers, court and NHRC officials and journalists before they snatched Adeyemi from the car of the NHRC. At least two shell casings that fell beside the car of the NHRC were picked up and are still with the NHRC officials.
The actions of the police on that day fit accurately into the definition of ‘Abduction’ that you quoted. The police took Adeyemi away forcefully and illegally. The police were not supposed to arrest him while he was in the custody of the NHRC by the order of court, and within the premises of the court.
You claimed that the police ‘noticed suspicious movements of youth’ allegedly loyal to Adeyemi in the court environs, and the nearby bushes. You further claimed that these youths resisted Adeyemi’s arrest, which you said warranted the police to swing into action, and arrested ‘some youths with charms and weeds suspected to be Indian hemp.’ The question is: How come it was only the police that noticed the presence of these youths? It is hard to believe that only the police noticed the presence of such number of youth that you described, who ‘invaded the court in solidarity with Adeyemi’. This would have been a very good and inescapable news item that no journalists would want to ignore.
We reiterate our conviction that there is a high level complicity in this case, which is responsible for the ongoing cover-up bid, and attempt to sacrifice Adeyemi because he has refused to ‘cooperate with’ the police, the prosecution and their sponsors. We also believe that the police charged Mr. Oni Adeyemi for murder because he refused to play along with the police and the high political interest involved in this case. He is now in prison custody. This kind of situation is essentially responsible for the overcrowding of Nigerian prisons, and it is the same reason that many innocent Nigerians continue to rot away in prisons awaiting trial for a crime they did not commit and for which they would never be made to face real trial.
Okechukwu Nwanguma
Program Coordinator
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