It doesn’t appear to have hit the ears of the human rights activists, more politically educated lawyers and the broader civil society in Nigeria. They are the constituencies more likely to most critically interrogate why some 30 women are still in custody two weeks after their arrest for bailable offences. Or why the presiding Magistrate, Mohammed Abdullahi-Lanze, put bail conditions the counsel to the defendants has called too stringent.
Predictably, the defendants, some of whom Intervention learnt to be passerby and non-residents of Nasarawa State, could not fulfil the bail conditions. Among the conditions are a surety who must be on the rank of a Director with the Federal or state bureaucracy in the jurisdiction of the court. And such a surety would have to submit his or her identity card, letter of first appointment, Two Million Naira and statement of account to the court.
The defendants are now on the second weekend in custody for failing to meet the conditions. Their first weekend was from Friday, January 19th, 2024 following their arrest by the Police on grounds of alleged participation in violence and destruction of public utilities in the wake of Supreme Court adjudication ruling upholding the election of Governor Abdullahi Sule of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The second is from January 25th, 2024.
The question areas are the fate of the children among the nursing mothers among them, why the bail failed even after the Attorney General and Nasarawa State Commissioner for Justice, Barrister Labaran Shuaibu Magaji, relieved the Police prosecution of the case by taking it over and endorsing bail for the defendants and, lastly, after Barrister Esson Mairiga, a Member of the State House of Assembly offered to stand as a surety for the accused persons.
Only the human rights NGOs can so interrogate the process with particular reference to whether the Nasarawa State Police Command is not taking Nigeria back into the era of ‘Holding Charges’ abrogated in the Nigerian legal system in 2015 via a ruling by an Appeal court.
Intervention understands that, under that practice within the criminal administration of justice, a Magistrate has little or no room for manoeuvre once the Police apply for an order to detain.
A different legal opinion told Intervention that it is possible the Police authorities in Nasarawa are utilising the provision in the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) which applies to Northern Nigeria and which makes a partner of the magistrate and police in determining such an application based on the First Information Report (FIR). That could be the opportunity the Magistrate had to slap the bail conditions on the defendants.
Lagos based human rights lawyer, Barrister Chiemeke Onyeisi, told Intervention that the defunct Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) would have stepped in with its own lawyers on the case and been able to locate whether any other laws or rights are being violated in the process of enforcing the charges against the defendants. Of course, the CLO is dead, perhaps not clinically yet.
At the moment, not only the CLO, the gender movement and the human rights activists do not appear to have heard the case. How long it may take them to hear is the question now. As is always the case, it might be some women in Nasarawa State today but somewhere in Yobe or Delta State tomorrow.
Meanwhile, commencement of trial has been scheduled for February 27th, 2024
