Read Post Shared By Omoyele Sowore
Nigeria's despicable police command in Lagos connived with the
tyrannical regime of UNILAG's VC, Prof. Rahman Bello to get Femi Adeyeye
arrested on Friday.
On Saturday Femi and 13 other students' activists
were hauled before a Kangaroo Lagos Mobile court (a court typically
meant for sanitation and minor traffic offenses) manned by one
Magistrate Peter Nwaka.
The students were then arbitrarily ordered
remanded in prison and shipped to Kirikiri Maximum Security Prison in
Lagos to reappear before the court again on April 6th for a bail hearing.
Their offense? "Riotous invasion of TVC and The University of Lagos."
I doubt that the penalty for the offense is even any form of imprisonment without the option of fine.
Well, I had a similar experience with the police in 1998.
I had led a students uprising at the National University Games in 1998 while UNILAG was hosting NUGA Games, the protest was to fight for the reinstatement of students' activists victimized by the military regime across Nigeria, to cut my story short and crisp, all hell broke loose at the NUGA games protest, I was arrested with several students' activists and brought before a Magistrate's Court in the Ebute-Metta/Yaba area of Lagos. Chief Gani Fawehinmi heard of our plight and sent Ebun-olu Adegboruwa to represent us in court.
To my chagrin, Ebun-olu Adegboruwa would not let us take a non-guilty plea. Instead, he told the judge that the criminal code under which the police charged us to court had a special exception, "you can't be riotous in a stadium or a movie theater." The Magistrate was flustered and begged Ebun to let them meet inside the chambers.
Ebun replied that it was unnecessary.
Embarrassed, the Magistrate hurriedly adjourned the case until after the NUGA games were over but still unjustly 'remanded' us in police custody at the SCID in Panti. The police claimed they hadn't concluded investigations The next time we returned to court, the case was struck out as police had no evidence.
Of course, the only reason we were charged to court was to keep us away in the gulag until NUGA games were concluded.
Femi Adeyeye's case is very similar. UNILAG connived with Lagos Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni and the "Jankara" Magistrate to detain Femi and others until they could commence exams on Monday, April 3rd. It is an unjust system, justice is on sale and has always been sale in Nigeria. RECLAIM YOUR SPACE!
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