The Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice in Kwara state, Kamaldeen Ajibade (SAN) has shifted back to the police the blame for the delay in prosecuting Offa robbery suspects.
The police claimed on Sunday that they had concluded investigations and passed since August the file for prosecution of the suspects to the Attorney-General of Kwara State, based on the advice of the Attorney-General of the Federation.
Ajibade, a senior advocate of Nigeria fired back today, accusing the police of lying and engaging in cheap blackmail.
Here is Ajibade’s statement:
“I see this as a cheap blackmail from the police and at this instance they have something to hide which they are yet to tell Nigerians about this case. I am sure at the end of the day Nigerians will know what has transpired in this matter.
“That is why the police are now passing the buck. They can now see that Nigerians have started asking questions that if you arrested suspects since April this year and they are yet to be charged to court; then there must be something about it. I urge Nigerians to ask questions about this
matter.
(What the police said: Kwara Attorney-General stalls prosecution)
“I am surprised particularly the statement coming from the Police Spokesperson Jimoh Moshood. Jimoh Moshood without being personal is from Ilorin here. He has contacts and I am sure he follows up with events in the Kwara command and he knows too well that all the suspects are still with him at the police headquarters.
“Why will he now come to mislead the public that we are yet to prosecute? How can you prosecute people kept in Abuja in Kwara state High Courts? It is not possible. I want to confirm to you that a letter was written from the office of the Director of the Public Prosecution of the Federation under the office of the Attorney General of the Federation. My office received the letter on August 27th this year.”
“The content of the letter had to do with the investigation report on the Offa robbery and directing my office to take up the prosecution of the matter.
“Immediately we received this letter on the 6th of September this year, we wrote a letter through the office of the state director of the public prosecution to the office of the Attorney General requesting from them to provide for us the original case diary in the Offa robbery and also to transfer the suspects to the Kwara state police command.
“We waited for about three weeks and did not hear anything from them. I then took it upon myself to personally meet with the AIG legal one David Ogbodo and I requested that the original case diary be sent to Kwara to enable us start prosecution of the matter. I also requested him to send all the suspects to Kwara state and he told me that he had
directed the man in charge. That is one Abba Kyari.
“We waited for another week, we could not get anything from them. So I directed my DPP to liaise with the police this time around. He liaised with the police both in the state and also with Abba Kyari. They promised every day that they would send the suspects to Kwara and the original case diary to no avail. You cannot prosecute under the law without having the original case diary. You cannot even file a charge without the case diary and in filing a charge you have to exhibit what we call proof of evidence.
“This proof of evidence entails the statements of witnesses. Statements of witnesses in this sense we are talking of the people that investigated Offa robber. We don’t have all these with us. We don’t have the suspects on ground, we don’t have the witnesses on ground. How do you file a charge? How do you prosecute people you can not see?”
