Olaitan: Lawyer, Group Demand Ugolor’s Release

Benin-based lawyer, Olayiwola  Afoloabi has petitioned the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mohammed Abubakar, requesting the immediate and unconditional release of human rights activist, Rev. David Ugolor, the Executive Director of African Network for Environment and Economic Justice (ANEEJ), from detention.

This follows the parade by State Security Service suspected the killers of Governor Adams Oshiomhole’ Principal Private Secretary, Comrade Olaitan Oyerinde, in Abuja, on Wednesday, for  which the police are also detaining the ANEEJ boss.

Rev. Ugolor who was picked up by  policemen on Friday, 27 July at his First East Circular Road office is being detained at the Area Command police station in Benin City.

His lawyer in a petition to the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, denied the suspect’s involvement or collaboration in the crime, adding that “the State Security Services (SSS) officials having paraded the actual killers of Olaitan Oyerinde, there is no legal basis to keep Rev. David Ugolor in police custody any longer.”

Ugolor’s counsel, Olayiwola Afolabi, added: “With due sense of legalistic responsibility, we demand for the unconditional release of Rev. David Ugolor as we do not want to seek legal redress to enforce constitutional and fundamental human rights in court and claim damages in view of the above crucial facts.

“We do not want to have a repeat of “BABA SUWE SAGA” when he was illegally detained in the custody of  the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), and the court eventually awarded huge sum of money; which the agency is still battling to pay.”

In a related development, Innocent Edemharia, Policy/Programme Officer of ANEEJ on Thursday told journalists that security around Ugolor was said to have been beefed up with the police denying the wife, Mrs. Ngozi Ugolor access to give food to her husband yesterday in Benin.

“You are all aware that yesterday, the SSS in Abuja paraded six suspects in Abuja who confessed to killing Comrade Olaitan.

“This morning, security around Rev. David Ugolor has been tightened. The police have prevented his wife, Mrs. Ngozi Ugolor from giving her husband food,” he said.

Edemarhia, who suspected that there might be plot to kill Rev. Ugolor in detention, therefore demanded for “his immediate release before the situation gets out of hand.”

Meanwhile, protesting members of civil society organizations demanding for Ugolor’s release were yesterday tear-gassed at the Edo Police Command Headquarters in Benin.

The protesters who had barricaded the entrance of the Command, later dispersed after they were addressed by Rev. Ugolor’s lawyer, Olayiwola Afolabi.

—Jethro Ibileke/ Benin