Minutes after being granted bail by a Magistrate Court in Kuje, human rights activist and #FreeNnamdiKanu protest pioneer Omoyele Sowore, has been rearrested by operatives of the Nigeria police Force.
The development comes shortly after reports earlier Sowore, along with Aloy Ejimakor, a member of the legal team representing the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, the IPOB leader’s brother, Prince Kanu, and ten others have been granted ₦500,000 bail each, with two sureties in like sum.
According to a legal practitioner, Tope Temokun, who was present when the officers stormed the court premises, the Sahara Reporters publisher was allegedly pounced on, manhandled, and forced into a waiting police van, while his legal team was in the process of perfecting his bail conditions.
Temokun explain that the operatives, led by CSP Ilyasu Barau, OC Anti-Vice, under DC-CID, FCT Command, reportedly assaulted Sowore as he resisted attempts by the officers to take him away without a proper explanation.
“After the court had freely and honorably granted bail to human rights defender Omoyele Sowore on liberal terms, a detachment of police officers, led by CSP Iliyasu, OC Anti Vice, State Command CID, invaded the court premises in a display of raw impunity and disdain for the rule of law. They descended violently upon Omoyele Sowore snd those present and, in the full glare of the public, abducted Sowore and whisked him away,” he wrote in his handle on Friday.
The lawyer also alleged that he and another witness at the scene were assaulted by the officers as they tried to prevent the enforcement agents from carrying out their operation.
“In the course of standing up against this brazen illegality, I and others were physically assaulted; I sustained injuries and my bib was blood-stained in the chaos that ensued. The officers, in a most unruly and undisciplined manner, rough-handled Sowore away and whisked him away,” he added.
According to him, “Let it be known that Sowore was not taken to prison, for any legal justification. Instead, the police spirited him away to an unknown destination, a clear and direct affront to the authority of the court, a mockery of the rule of law, and a violation of the fundamental rights of a citizen.
“The judiciary is the last hope of the common man. The magistrate displayed courage despite stiff opposition from the police to frustrate bail. That was what irked them. What we saw after was not law or anything close to legality, its police and executive brigandage.
“Today marks a dark and painful moment for justice and democracy in Nigeria. Yet, it is also a moment of reckoning, a call to conscience.
“To our fellow countrymen who once fell for the propaganda of “enforcing court orders, let this incident serve as an awakening. The government and it’s enforcers are not after enforcing or obedience to court order but just a plan to a sinister end.
“We call upon the Attorney General of the Federation, the National Human Rights Commission, and indeed all well-meaning Nigerians and lovers of justice to rise in unison and condemn this reckless desecration of our judicial institution. We demand deferrence to the order of court granting bail.
