The Federal High Court in Abuja has fixed Friday for the hearing of the suit by the 12 persons arrested at the residence of Yoruba freedom fighter, Sunday Adeyemo (Sunday Igboho) against the Department of State Services.

The 12 persons and the DSS are to appear before Justice Obiora Atuegwu Egwuatu on Friday for the commencement of the human rights’ suit, Flavision gathered.

Flavision had last week reported that the Yoruba agitators earlier sued the Department of State Services before the same court.

In a joint application filed by their lawyers at the Federal High Court, the allies of the Yoruba activist described their arrest and subsequent detention as unlawful.

The 12 persons are; Abdullateef Ofeyagbe, Amoda Babatunde (Aka Lady K), Tajudeen Erinoyen, Diakola Ademola, Abideen Shittu, and Jamiu Noah.

Others are Ayobami Donald, Adelabe Usman, Oluwafelumi Kunle, Raji Kazeem, Taiwo Opeyemi and Bamidele Sunday.

The defendants are the Director-General, State Security Service (SSS), also known as the Department of State Services (DSS) and the DSS.

On July 1, DSS operatives stormed Igboho’s residence around 1 am, killing two of his associates and arresting about 13 persons.

Igboho, who escaped the raid, has since gone into hiding as the secret police have declared him wanted.

In the suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/647/2021, the applicants had sought the order of the court mandating and compelling the respondents to produce the applicants before the court and

show cause as to why the applicants should not be granted bail in accordance with the provision of section 32 of Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 and other extant laws in Nigeria.

One of the counsels for the applicants, Pelumi Olajengbesi, recently told journalists that the DSS refused to grant him and the other lawyers on the case access to the 12 suspects detained by the secret police.

The detained persons, through their lawyers, subsequently sued the secret police and its director general.

Flavision had earlier reported that though Tuesday and Wednesday had been announced by the Nigerian Government as holiday to mark the Eid-el-Kabir celebrations (Sallah), the court insisted that it would hear the case on Tuesday.

Olajengbesi had said,

We were at the Federal High Court, Abuja on Friday and we can confirm that the matter has been assigned to Federal High Court 9, Abuja and will be coming up for hearing on Tuesday the 20th of July, 2021.

While we are not ignorant of the fact that the stipulated date happens to be a public holiday as declared by the Federal Government, we contacted the Registrar of the court and complained, but the response was that My Lord personally fixed the date. We are optimistic that we will get another short date since we are not certain the matter will proceed for hearing that day, however we will follow up.

The matter should have been heard by now, but we are surprised that it took too long for us to get a response from the assigned court despite filing affidavits of extreme urgency. We are glad the matter is now in Court 9 and we are hopeful of having a good day in court soon.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.