By J.S Okutepa, SAN
Nigeria is indeed a comedy of jokes. I do not really understand the ways of those in charge of the systems in Nigeria. It appears that virtually all those in charge of our institutions have lost their thinking faculties and only reason after they have acted wrongly to the prejudices and disadvantages of the victims and to the embarrassment of the Nigerian nation.
Those in charge of institutions of governance in Nigeria appear to be at the beck and call of the executive and can only be directed by the President and or the executive before they remember to act rationally and reasonably. When the children and/or the minors arrested by the police and kept in the most dehumanising state were arraigned before the Federal High Court Abuja on the 1st of November 2024 the police authorities and the police Prosecutor were very loud in defence of their actions then. They made everyone think they had a good cause to do what they did.
Indeed, the police spokesman Olumiyiwa Adejobi, who spoke on behalf of the IGP, claimed that the children who fell during court proceedings staged drama. The police prosecutor said those children were adults, and some of them were master’s degree holders. The learned trial judge who handled the case adjourned the case to January 2025 after impositions of impossible bail conditions, because perhaps the court’s diary could not accommodate earlier dates even though the Administration of Criminal Justice Act says adjournments should be within the intervals of 14 days.
Following public outcry, these children have been released. The case has been brought forward, and now the dairy of the court has accommodated the new date of 5th November 2024. Nigerian institutions have lost their independence. So the police are now signing new songs. IGP has now set in motion a process to do investigations of what happened. Police are to meet on the 7th of November 2024 for this purpose.
Nigeria is a comedy of jokes. Why did IGP justify the earlier actions? When I speak, I do so out of my conviction that this country can not grow if we keep patronizing what is wrong and give it the baptismal name of right under partisan considerations.
So the way and manner those children were treated accorded with the way and manner the laws allowed them to be treated so said the police before. They could not show from the laws the law that permits the manner the charges we saw were framed to be so framed. They now want to investigate the circumstances that led to their misconduct rooted in pure wickedness in the extreme.
What were the proofs of evidence that supported prima facie the charge they framed apart from the charge saying so? As lawyers, we owe a lot of duties to be bold and courageous to be the social engineers that we are trained to be. Mr. President of Nigeria can not be everywhere. But where those who are to act for the Nigerian state and on his behalf misconducted themselves, as in this case, my humble view is that they should face the consequences of their misconduct. That is how to restore sanity to an otherwise insane behaviour.
It is, therefore, my view that what the IGP and all those who supported that national show of shame are doing now is nothing but sycophancy and eyeservices. Nigerians saw through the wickedness of the institutions of justice in Nigeria.
These children are products of the wickedness of the state. The state owes them the responsibility to be good citizens. The enabling environments to be productive citizens have been siphoned by the rotten systems we run as a people. Those in charge of government in the North who stole the future of these children and almost ruined their tomorrow should be fished out and dealt with according to law. It is not enough to release them back to the unhygienic conditions that led to the pitiable states they are now.
