The Department of State Services (DSS) has said it has charged the suspended Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, to court.
Development Diaries reports that this was in response to an Abuja High Court ruling that asked the DSS to either release Emefiele or charge him to court in seven days.
It is understood that Justice Hamza Muazu gave the order while ruling on a fundamental rights enforcement suit filed by Emefiele challenging his arrest and continued detention by the DSS.
The DSS had on 10 June, 2023, arrested Emefiele shortly after President Bola Tinubu suspended him from office.
Spokesman of the DSS, Peter Afunanya, in a statement, said the DSS in December 2022 applied for a court order to detain Emefiele but he got another order stopping his arrest.
‘The public may recall that the Service had, in 2022, applied for a court order to detain him in respect of a criminal investigation. Though he obtained a restraining order from an FCT High Court’, the statement read.
‘The service, however, arrested him in June 2023 on the strength of suspected fresh criminal infractions/information, one of which forms the basis for his current prosecution’.
From the DSS’s statement, it implies that the arrest of Emefiele is based on a 2022 order from an FCT high court. Hence, a fresh order for arrest was not secured.
Also, the prolonged detention that the DSS had subjected Emefiele to without proof of the crime he committed is clearly a case of a breach of fundamental human rights.
Without a doubt, the DSS is authorised by the Nigerian constitution to make arrests, hold suspects, and stop internal crime, but this power must be used lawfully.
The DSS has already breached the law in the area of infringement on Emefile’s human rights because they ought to have granted him administrative bail, pending his prosecution.
We wonder why he was not charged to court all along, since he was arrested. Why the delay? Does it mean they were unsure of what charges should be levelled against him?
According to section 35 of the 1999 constitution, anybody who is arrested by any of the security agencies, be it police or DSS, should be charged to court where there is a court within a radius of 40 kilometres; if not, the person should be charged within 48 hours.
In their statement, the DSS said Emefiele was arrested for ‘criminal infractions’ for which he was being prosecuted.
Development Diaries calls on the DSS to reveal in detail the ‘criminal infractions’ for which the suspended CBN governor was arrested and ensure it carries out the rest of its operations in line with the law.
We also call on President Bola Tinubu to ensure that under his watch, government agencies do not disobey court orders, as was observed in the previous administration.
Photo source: Godwin Emefiele
