Justice Ntong Ntong, the presiding judge at the Akwa Ibom State High Court in Uyo, has ordered the Inspector General of Police, the Police Service Commission, and three others to pay Peace Ekom Robert, a housewife in Uyo, the sum of N200 million as damages for her unlawful arrest and detention.
This judgment was delivered on Tuesday in a case where Mrs. Ekom sought the enforcement of her fundamental human rights.
According to the details of the case, Mrs. Ekom was approached by Ifenyinwa Anthonia Olua in March this year.
Olua asked Mrs. Ekom to help her connect with someone in Europe who could purchase euros and pay her in Naira.
An amount of £55,000 (equivalent to N42.9m) was transferred to a Spanish account.
The sudden and successive transfers raised suspicion, and the Spanish authorities restricted the account, suspecting it could contain illicit funds.
As a result, the Police arrested the applicant.
The Inspector General of Police, Commissioner of Police, Administration, Force Criminal Investigation Department in Abuja, Mr. Babazango Ibrahim, DSP Yusuf Dauda of Anti-Homicide Section in Alagbon, Lagos, Inspector Celestina Ugbaja of Special Fraud Unit in Ikoyi, Lagos, and the Police Service Commission were all named as respondents in the lawsuit.
In a one-hour judgment, the presiding judge, Justice Ntong Ntong said he had “read in between lines the record file and has not seen where the Inspector General of Police and other respondents filed any process to challenge the averments of the applicant.”
Justice Ntong said the evidence before the Court showed that “the Police threw caution to the wind and became law unto themselves thereby bastardizing the 1999 constitution, disrespecting the order of the Court and treating the name of God and office of the President and Commander in chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with disdain.”
The Court also ordered the Inspector General of Police and five other “respondents to return the N15m collected from the applicant to the Chief Registrar of the Federal High Court, Abuja pending the hearing and final determination of the criminal charge against the applicant before the Federal High Court.”
The trial judge held that the Police were not “a debt recovery agency and has no power to have extorted N15m from the applicant in a matter they have not concluded investigation nor the applicant tried and found guilty by a court of competent jurisdiction.”
The applicant’s counsel, Uwemedimo Nwoko, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, referred to the Court as the last hope for the common man.
The respondent’s counsel, Barr. Akebong Essien, argued that his client had done nothing wrong by reporting the matter to the Police.
Despite the judgment, the Police had still not properly arraigned the applicant, who had been in their custody since March of that year.