A coalition of four human rights-inclined groups – Africans for Human Rights International (AfriRights); Christian Youths for People’s Rights and Development (CYPD); the Conscience Mainstream and the National Conscience Party (NCP), Lagos State Chapter – has flayed the Lagos arm of the Nigerian Police for recent indiscriminate arrests and detention of innocent Muslims, who were hurriedly dubbed Boko Haram members without proof.
Leading the consortium of agitated groups at a press briefing, which held at the Aboru, Iyana-Ipaja Secretariat of the NCP, Mr. Afolabi Gbajumo, NCP’s Lagos State Chairman, said the Lagos State Police Command had, in the last nine days, detained without charging to court as stipulated by the law, seven innocent Muslims. He gave the names of the seven victims as Adeniyi Alimi Sulaiman, Hakeem Rahman, Sulaiman Ali, Kabir Sofudiya, Ganiyu Sadu, Jelil Sanusi and Sulaiman Adebayo. All seven have been detained in various cells, ranging from the Divisional Police Office (DPO), Abattoir; Area G Command, Ogba; State Police Command, Ikeja; to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) since Monday, 31st August 2009.
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Mr. Gbajumo said a combination of four factors – the victims’ refusal/inability to pay gratifications demanded by the police, an Islamic magazine’s criticism of the police and previous Inspectors-General, vendetta between the police and one of the victims, and the DPO Abattoir’s craze for unmerited popularity – was responsible for the plight of the seven Muslims. “The undiluted truth of the matter is that Kabiru Sofudiya, a printer, was accosted by the police on the road near Abattoir police Station, Oko-Oba, Agege. In their characteristic stop-and-search manner, the Abattoir police demanded gratifications, which he was unable to fulfill. Therefore, they arrested him on the trumped-up charge that since the Al-Minbar (meaning ‘pulpit’) Islamich Magazine in printing process had dedicated a page to the analysis of the Boko Haram crisis, he must have been a member. Subsequently, the police arrested the Editor, Sulaiman Ali; his father and other innocent women, some of whom were pregnant”, he explained.
All efforts by himself and the President of the West African Bar Association, Mr. Femi Falana to either secure their bails or make the police charge them to court were frustrated by transfers of the accused from station to station. He then called on President Yar’Adua, the Inspector-General of Police and the Lagos State Governor to wade into the case, as it had the potency of “instigating religious uprising and communal fracas in a very peaceful Lagos environment known for cordial multi-religious and multi-ethnic coexistence”.
Speaking on behalf of other members of the foursome, Lucky Ehiguina expressed regrets over the police’s hasty approach to the case and called on Christians and Muslims to see one another as one. Olusegun Adeeko, Director, AfriRights berated the Abattoir Police for detaining innocent Muslims, some of whom they knew, just because the same people had been previously involved in human rights disputes with the command. Speaking on behalf of Conscience Mainstream, its General Secretary, Mallam Ismail Anwo claimed thus: “Comrade Adeniyi Alimi Sulaimon is the Mobilization and Planning Director of NCP in Lagos and he is not unknown to many police officers especially in the within the Ikeja/Agege axis in view of his efforts at defending the oppressed against the shackles of police brutality…. Even the CP can’t deny knowing him… so why are they now branding him a member of Boko Haram?”
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