A Magistrate Court sitting in the Adamawa State capital, Yola has detained two members of a faction of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and their lawyer over alleged public disturbance.
Magistrate Dimas Gwama of Magistrate Court IV, held a session to consider an ex-parte application to detain the lawyer and the two other people whose rights he was said to be trying to protect.
The three: the lawyer, Barr. Hussaini Kazir; R-PDP chairman of Yelli Ward in Jada local government area, Phillips Buji and one Abdullsalam Adamu, who had been on bail since Saturday (April 11) were brought before the court Wednesday on charges of terrorism, forgery and conspiracy to cause violence.
The Adamawa State Police Command which had arrested and subsequently arraigned the three, had prayed the court for an order to remand them in custody under Section 294 of the Adamawa State Administration of Criminal Justice Law.
Counsel to the defendants, Jerry Owe, faulted the remand order, saying that besides flouting the orders of NJC to shut down courts till April 20, 2020, this kind of remand order by a magistrate court is applicable only in places where there is no higher court with due jurisdiction.
Speaking after the court session, Leader of Reformed PDP, Dr Umar Ardo, described the court process as political victimisation.
“We are going to write a petition to the NJC on the magistrate who had exercised this injustice on us,” Umar Ardo said.
He similarly accused the Adamawa State Police Commissioner of being a part of the ‘injustice’, saying “We are also going to write a petition before the Inspector General of Police against the police commissioner for being a pawn in the political chess game of the Adamawa State Government.”
It ill be recalled that the whole story started on Thursday April 9, when a team of mobile policemen went to Kojoli, Umar Ardo’s birthplace in Jada local government area, closed the factional office of the R-PDP there, removed the hoisted flags, arrested the factional chairman, Mr. Phillip Buji, and brought and locked him up in Yola.
Ardo who had raised the alarm in a petition to the inspector general of Police, had added that on Friday (April 10) when he sent the factional PDP lawyer, Barr Husseini Guyuk, to bail Mr. Buji, the lawyer was himself detained, and that his PA, Abdulsalam Adamu, who took food to them, was as well detained by the police.
The three had subsequently been arraigned before the court by the police.