The State Security Service has issued yet another controversial
statement claiming Wednesday afternoon that it refused to release
Omoyele Sowore because the “appropriate persons” have not turned up to
pick him up at its headquarters.
Sowore met all bail conditions on November 6 and a federal judge
signed warrant for his immediate release from the SSS custody, where
he had been held since August 5.
“It is only appropriate that those who stood surety for Mr Sowore
present themselves and have him released to them,” SSS spokesperson
Peter Afunanya said in a statement yesterday.
Afunanya’s statement was the third the SSS would issue since last week
Wednesday when Mr Sowore satisfied bail conditions, promising to obey
court order, yet had failed to do so.
The statement appeared a minor rework of the SSS’ Friday night
statement, in which the secret police claimed Sowore was not released
because no one had come for him.
The SSS was widely ridiculed by the statement, with social media
commentators saying it was a mockery of the entire country that an
intelligence agency would issue a statement that has no basis in logic
or law.
After days of Nigerians trooping to its headquarters in Abuja and
field offices in Lagos to get the SSS to comply with the court order,
the agency now claimed that its statement last week was requesting for
the sureties of Mr Sowore and not anyone as its statement expressly
indicated.
Afunanya also failed to explain why he did not indicate in its Friday
statement last week that it was calling for sureties to come for
Sowore.
He also failed to explain why it took so many days to clarify that it
was requesting sureties when dozens of people, including Sowore’s
lawyers, have been trooping to the SSS since Saturday to get the
agency to live up to its words to the public.
Lawyers have also said that there is no law that requires anyone to
collect a person who has met bail conditions detention, and definitely
not an adult.
The SSS also attacked Sowore’s lawyer, Femi Falana, for his statements
in the media. Falana had told Nigerians that the SSS was plotting to
file fresh charges against Sowore in order to justify its apparent
disregard of court order, which effectively made its detention of
Sowore illegal since November 6.
Falana had said he made several attempts to get Sowore released from
custody after he met bail conditions, but the SSS refused. The rights
lawyer also reminded Nigerians that the SSS had disregarded a previous
court order for Sowore’s release in September.
Even though the SSS claimed again that it was a law-abiding agency,
its history is replete with flagrant violations of citizens rights and
competent court pronouncements. The cases of Nigeria’s former national
security adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and Shiite leader, Ibrahim el-Zakzaky,
are some of the most prominent case of judicial violations by the
agency in recent years.
