The family of a 14-year-old police detainee, Anthony Odinaka Udokwu, has petitioned the Nationwide Assembly, the Police Service Price (PSC) and the Inspector Widespread of Police (IGP) for his or her intervention.
Grasp Udokwu was detained on February 5 and a courtroom had granted him bail nonetheless the police have not obeyed the order.
Inside the petition by the family’s lawyer, Ishaka Dikko (SAN) and copied to the IGP, the PSC Chairman, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Police Affairs, and the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Police Affairs, the distraught family urged them to prevail on the police to obey the courtroom’s bail order granted on February 24, 2021 by a Federal Extreme Court docket docket in Lafia, the Nasarawa State apital.
Dikko said Udokwu, an SS1 pupil of Jofaq Worldwide Faculty, Lafia, Nasarawa State, was arrested on February 5, 2021 by the police from the “A” Division Police Station, Lafia, Nasarawa State, for allegedly defiling of a lady at his home.
He added that no matter Udokwu’s denial that he in no way had canal data of the alleged sufferer, the police, allegedly acting on the directive of Chief Superintendent of Police (CSP) J. A. Idoku (OC Approved), transferred the case to the Jail Investigation and Intelligence Division (CIID) for extra investigation.
The lawyer averred that no matter displaying the police that the alleged offender is a minor, they’ve continued to detain him on the CIID.
He said the police had allegedly tortured the boy, even when he was unwell and wanted to be dealt with on the expense of his dad and mother on the Police Clinic in Lafia.
Dikko added that as part of efforts to protected freedom for the detained minor, he filed a fundamental rights enforcement swimsuit sooner than the Federal Extreme Court docket docket in Lafia.
The lawyer said this prompted Justice Yellim Bogoro, in a ruling on February 24, 2021, to order the discharge of the boy, an order the police had reportedly continued to disobey.
He said: “Whatever the provisions of Half 217 of the Toddler Rights Laws of Nasarawa State 2005 and the Toddler Rights Act 2003, all oral features for the bail of our shopper by his dad and mother along with by counsel, had been ignored by the Police CIID, Lafia, beneath the directives of DCP Bappa Magaji Jahon and CSP J. A. Idoku.
“Regrettably, the O/C Approved, CSP J. A. Idoku, an officer of the courtroom and a lawyer duly often called to the Nigerian Bar, who’s ordinarily alleged to advise and assure strict compliance with extant authorized pointers and orders of courtroom, has remained complicit in ensuring that the order of the Federal Extreme Court docket docket should not be complied with.
“Whereas no citizen must condone any charge of crime, significantly basically essentially the most heinous offence of rape, no citizen or any official authorities or any institution of presidency must vilify or crucify any explicit particular person suspected of the charge ‘of crime with out due compliance with the regulation, even when it is essentially the most dreaded and heinous offence of murder’.
“Our shopper, since February 5, 2021, has been in detention on the CIID, Lafia, Nasarawa State, no matter all efforts for his bail and clearly on account of the daddy of our shopper could not afford to supply the daddy of the alleged sufferer the sum of N500,000.00.
For certain that, assuming with out conceding that our shopper is culpable of the allegation, no father would afford to advertise the womanhood of his daughter for money.”
The lawyer wants the IGP; the Chairman, PSC; the Chairman, Senate Committee on Police Affairs, and the Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Police Affairs to compel the police to ensure “the speedy launch of our shopper in compliance with the order of the Federal Extreme Court docket docket Lafia.”
He is moreover looking for the “investigation of all the officers involved throughout the violation of the respectable order of courtroom of competent jurisdiction, which ordered the discharge on bail of our shopper, who’s a minor of 14 years, along with the act of torture of our shopper”.
Dikko is asking for disciplinary measures to be taken in opposition to “the officers involved in accordance with the Police Act, as any officer found wanting, would have clearly breached the regulation and abused basically essentially the most revered Police uniform, worn to defend the citizenry”.
