No less than 105 lawyers from Aguata bar in Anambra State, on Thursday, swooped on a Federal High Court sitting in Awka, the state capital, over the police’s intimidation of their colleague, Ndubuisi Onyeakpa.
The legal counselors appeared before Justice I. N. Oweido to demand for the fundamental human rights of their colleague to carry out his job without encumbrance nor hindrance.
Ndubuisi Onyeakpa had been pronounced missing by his group after his home at Umunze, was invaded by the police.
Onyeakpa, who is in charge of a land case for his community, in Umuncheke, Orumba South Local Government Area, was said to have also been assaulted by unknown persons.
This prompted his family and his partners in the Nigerian Bar Association to petition the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase.
Be that as it may, on Thursday, his kindred legal advisors chose to approach the court to stop the further badgering of their colleague.
According to Southern City News, the leader of the lawyers, Aniazoka Zokas said: “The court is seeing the matter for the first time. We have informed the court that there are about five applications pending before it, including the main application of fundamental rights.”
“We are here to stop the AIG, Zone 9, the Commissioner of Police in Anambra and their cronies from this harassment. You cannot go to arrest somebody by 1am. It’s not the normal time to go to somebody’s house for arrest. It means you want to kill him. We suspect that the police have taken bribe from the other party because there was a warning that Onyeakpa should hands off from the matter he was handling for his client.”
“How can the police be scaling somebody’s wall by 1am to arrest him? We can’t allow this. This is putting in jeopardy the nobility of the legal profession. No 1,000 policemen, including the IGP can stop the law profession. We have the duty to defend our clients when they come to us properly. It’s in the law that it is our duty to defend our clients.”
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