The Government of Kwara State has
accused the Police of hiding something from Njgerians as regard the suspects
involved in the robbery operation in Offa.
The State Government said that
the Police was being economical with the truth on what happened.
The police had reportedly blamed
the state Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Justice Kamaldeen
Ajibade, SAN, for delaying arraignment of the suspects.
They said they had concluded
investigations and sent the case file to the Attorney-General of the Federation
and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, who directed that the file be sent to
the state attorney-general.
Reacting to the police statement
in Ilorin, Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Ajibade described the
police utterances as ‘cheap blackmail.’
The Commissioner said, “I see
this as a cheap blackmail by the police. They have something to hide, which
they are yet to tell Nigerians. I am sure at the end of the day, Nigerians will
know what has transpired in this matter. That is why the police are passing the
buck. They can now see that Nigerians have started asking questions that if
you’ve arrested suspects since April and they are yet to be arraigned, then
there must be something about it. I urge people to ask questions about this
matter.
“I am surprised, particularly the
statement coming from the police spokesman, Jimoh Moshood. Moshood, without
being personal, is from Ilorin. He has contacts and I am sure he follows events
in the Kwara Command. He knows that the suspects are still with him at the
police headquarters.
“Why will he now mislead the
public that we are yet to prosecute? How can you prosecute people kept in Abuja
in Kwara State High Court? It is not possible.
“I want to confirm to you that a
letter was written from the Office of the Director of the Public Prosecution of
the Federation under the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation. My
office received the letter on August 27.
“The content of the letter had to
do with the investigation report on the Offa robbery and directing my office to
take up the prosecution of the matter.
“Immediately we received this
letter on September 6, we wrote a letter through the Office of the State
Director of the Public Prosecution to the Office of the Attorney-General
requesting them to provide for us the original case diary in the Offa robbery
and to transfer the suspects to Kwara State Police Command. We waited for about
three weeks and did not hear anything from them.
“I then met the AIG Legal, David
Ogbodo and requested that the original case diary be sent to Kwara to enable us
start prosecution of the matter. I also requested him to send the suspects to
Kwara State and he told me that he had directed the man in charge. That is Abba
Kyari.
“We waited for another week, we
could not get anything from them. So, I directed my DPP to liaise with the
police this time. He liaised with the police both in the state and with Abbah
Kyari. They promised everyday that they would send the suspects to Kwara and
the original case diary, to no avail.
“You cannot prosecute under the
law without having the original case diary. You cannot even file a charge
without the case diary and in filing a charge, you have to exhibit what we call
proof of evidence.
“This proof of evidence entails
the statements of witnesses. Statements of witnesses in this sense, we are
talking of the people that investigated Offa robbers. We don’t have all these
with us. We don’t have the suspects on ground, we don’t have the witnesses on
ground.
“How do you file a charge? How do
you prosecute people you cannot see?”
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com