The Nation Newspaper

Tag: 15 years

  • Man gets 15 years for kidnapping Emzor Pharmaceuticals’ MD’s sister

    A Lagos High Court in Igbosere yesterday sentenced a man, Chidiebere Nwoye, to 15 years’ imprisonment for his involvement in the kidnap of Mrs. Gloria Emole, the wife of his gang member’s former boss.

    According to the prosecutor, the Lagos State Government, Gloria Emole is a sister of Emzor Pharmaceuticals’ Managing Director.

    Justice Lateef Lawal-Akapo convicted Nwoye after his plea of “guilty” to an amended two-count charge of conspiracy and attempted robbery.

    The judge held that the jail term would run from July 13, 2013, when Nwoye was first remanded in prison custody.

    Nwoye and four others – Chukwunonso Victor, Ifeanyi Maduako, Obinna Nwanko, and one Azeez, now at large – were arraigned on July 13, 2013 on a three-count charge of conspiracy, robbery and kidnapping.

    Victor, Maduako and Nwanko are still on trial.

    During their arraignment, the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Dr. Babajide Martins, told the court that the defendants committed the offences on November 19, 2012, about 8:30am.

    He said they kidnapped Mrs. Emole while she was leaving her home at Unity Street, Ogudu Government Reserved Area (GRA), Lagos.

    Mrs. Emole was released after her abductors were paid $70,000 ransom.

    Martins said the offences contravened sections 297, 295 (2) and 269 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.

    The defendants pleaded not guilty.

    But, following the commencement of trial, Nwoye opted for a plea bargain.

    The charge against him was then amended to conspiracy and attempted robbery, to which he pleaded guilty.

    During the trial, a prosecution witness, Inspector Gbenga Faguiro, who was led in evidence by Martins, narrated how the kidnap occurred.

    Faguiro said the first defendant, Chukwunonso Victor, was an employee of Mr. Chika Emole, the husband of Mrs. Emole, before he was sacked for fighting in the office.

    He said during investigation, the first defendant told him that the victim’s husband was his boss before he was sacked for fighting in the office.

    Faguiro testified that Victor felt Mr. Emole had a hand in the death of his only child, because of his opposition to his marriage.

    He said: “The first defendant said he travelled to China and spent four years there. On his return, he met a lady friend and they got married. She gave birth, but after some time, the baby died.

    “So the first defendant got angry and said it was his boss that killed his child because he warned him not to marry the woman.

    “The first defendant called the other defendants and one Azeez, who is at large, and they kidnapped the victim.”

    Faguiro said on November 19, 2012, about 8:30am, Mrs. Emole was about to leave her house on Unity Street, Ogudu GRA, and she gave key to her guard to open the gate.

    “The guard opened the gate and, as she was getting into her car, six gunmen accosted her, grabbed her and covered her head with a hood.”

    Faguiro said they threatened the guard with their weapons and “the Mallam, (guard) shouted ‘Allah, Allah, don’t kill me’.”

    The court heard that the gang drove their victim to an abandoned hotel in Ikorodu.

    The witness continued: “When they got inside, they asked her to call her husband and they started demanding $300,000 ransom.”

    Faguiro said the victim’s brother eventually paid $70,000 to one of the suspects, who is at large, at Ojodu Berger, Lagos.

    “Chukwunonso and the other defendants, after collecting the money, took one of the victim’s phones from her bag. They used her Automated Teller Machine (ATM) card to withdraw money from her account,” he added.

    The court further heard that after her kidnap, Mr. Emole reported the case at Ogudu Police Station, from where the case was transferred to the Special Investigation Bureau (SIB) Ikeja.

    Faguiro said after her release, “she (Mrs. Emole) said the defendants were still with one of her phones. The SIB then collected the phone number and tracked it. That was how the first defendant, Chukwunonso, was arrested, which led to the arrest of the other defendants.”

     

     

  • Shekau’s mum: I’ve not seen him for 15 years

    Driving west from the city of Maiduguri, Nigeria, the roads get narrower as the towns get smaller. Along the road lie bullet-ridden buildings and security check points as vigilante members patrol gates, all signs of a region where people are trying their best to protect themselves.

    After three hours VOA ends up in Yobe State, at a village called Shekau. Here, elders and community leaders take VOA to meet Falmata Abubakar, who they say is the mother of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau.

    His father was a local district imam before passing away a few years ago.

    Falmata said she had never spoken to journalists before VOA approached her, and she does not know where her son is hiding.

    “I don’t now if he’s alive or dead. I don’t know. It’s only God who knows. For 15 years I haven’t seen him,” she said.

    Concealing their hometown

    People here say they often hide the fact that they are from Abubakar Shekau’s hometown because others may fear they have Boko Haram connections.

    Falmata says her son left Shekau as a boy to continue his Islamic education in Maiduguri, a centre of religious studies for hundreds of years.

    Shekau was an almajiri. In the generations-old tradition, almajirai are sent off by their parents to study the Quran in schools locally known as a tsangaya, where a teacher coaches the dozens, sometimes hundreds of male students, to memorise the entire Quran.

    Almajirai beg on the streets for food, and it is believed that Shekau did the same. At some point in his studies, Shekau, according to his mother, met Mohammed Yusuf, the founder of Boko Haram, who condemned Western education as sinful. Falmata says her son was brainwashed.

    ‘Different characters’

    “Since Shekau met with Mohammed Yusuf, I didn’t see him again,” she told VOA.

    “Yes, he’s my son and every mother loves her son, but we have different characters,” she said. “He brought a lot of problem to many people. Where can I meet him to tell him that these things he is doing is very bad? He brought many problems to many people, but I am praying for God to show him the good way.”

    Mohammed Yusuf was killed by security agents in 2009.  Abubakar Shekau then took over as the leader.

    Shekau is accused of leading an insurgency that has killed more than 30,000 people in northeastern Nigeria and the Lake Chad region.

    Destroying schools is at the heart of Boko Haram’s manifesto, and the group has attacked more than 1,400 schools, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

    Members of the group invaded the first primary school in northeastern Nigeria in 2010 and 2013. They killed the principal and secretary.

    In 2014, Boko Haram killed 59 students at a federal school in Buni Yadi, Yobe State. The school is being rebuilt but the expansive campus is barren, a reminder of one of the bloodiest school attacks in Nigeria’s history.

    In February of this year, the sect kidnapped more than 100 students from the girls’ secondary school in the town of Dapchi.

    The insurgents returned the students a month later, but held onto Leah Sharibu, reportedly because she refused to convert to Islam in exchange for her freedom. Her mother Rebecca and her brother say they feel in their hearts that Leah is still alive.

    It’s the 2014 abduction of the Chibok Girls from their school that brought Boko Haram into the international spotlight for unprecedented condemnation. The Bring Back Our Girls activists are still demanding the freedom of at least 100 Chibok Girls, including Dorcas Yakubu who turned 20 years old this week, marking her birthday while in Boko Haram captivity. In 2016, Dorcas appeared in a proof of life video released by the terrorists.

    Falmata says she can never curse her son, but he has become someone who she doesn’t recognise anymore.

    “He just took his own character and went away,” she said. “This is not the character I gave him. I don’t know what this type of behavior is. It’s only God who knows.”

     

     

  • ‘Yahoo boy’ gets 15 years

    A Lagos High Court in Igbosere has sentenced an Internet scammer, Demola Ajibade, to 15 years’ imprisonment for attempted robbery.

    Justice Sedoten Ogunsanya convicted Ajibade, 36, of attempting to rob his childhood friend, Charles Akpati, with a toy gun on February 7, 2014.

    The sentence, which takes effect from the date of his arrest in February 2014, was without an option of fine.

    Ajibade, from Ijebu Ode in Ogun State, but living in Festac Town, Lagos, was arraigned on June 24, 2014 on a one-count charge of attempted robbery.

    Prosecuting counsel Adebayo Haroun said the offences contravened Section 296(1) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011.

    Ajibade pleaded not guilty.

    During a three years and nine months trial, the court heard how the incident occurred near a bus garage in Ikorodu, Lagos State.

    Akpati, a customer care executive, said Ajibade stopped him on the road and identified himself as his former neighbour at Festac Town.

    He said: “I asked him to explain how we met and he mentioned my secondary school, Festac College.

    “Later he said someone did not like me in my office and that he had been mandated to kill me. He lifted up his shirt a little. There was a gun there. He said he would kill me and that that was what he did for a living. He said eyes were on me and I could not escape because his members were in hiding, watching us, but that he had decided not to kill me.”

    The victim said Ajibade demanded N300,000 to spare his life, but he negotiated for N100,000.

    “Ajibade accepted and followed me to a nearby commercial bank so I could withdraw the money.”

    Akpati said: “He followed me to the bank and on getting to the security door, he said he would not enter with me because of the gun and warned me not to misbehave when I got inside.”

    The victim said he quickly informed the bank’s security officials, who, with a mobile policeman, Corporal A. Richard, from a nearby commercial bank, pursued and arrested Ajibade.

    The prosecution said police investigation showed that Ajibade specialised in Internet scam, also known as Yahoo Yahoo and had been fraudulently obtaining money from victims in Italy.

    The suspect denied the allegation.

    He claimed that Akpati owed him money and refused to pay, adding that he set him up for an unlawful arrest by the police.

    Justice Ogunsanya held that Akpati’s evidence, as well as that of eyewitnesses, including the exhibits tendered, were credible.

    The judge added: “The victim identified the defendant as the person who tried to rob him. The court is satisfied that the defendant is as guilty as charged.”

  • 15 years after, fate of 860 Mobil staff unknown

    15 years after, fate of 860 Mobil staff unknown

    Over five years after Mobil Producing Nigeria Limited appealed a 2010 Court of Appeal judgment directing it to accept responsibility for the employment of 860 Nigerians it engaged as security personnel, the company is ‘foot-dragging and unwilling’ to ensure prompt determination of the case which arose from a15-year-old dispute, Eric Ikhilae reports.

    As last the count, about 120 of them have died. Although some have either resigned or retired, many are still in service, hoping that one day, the Supreme Court will determine the status of their employment with multi-national oil giant, Mobil Producing Nigeria Limited.

    Okon Johnson, now in his late 60s and some of his surviving colleagues left the Supreme Court dejected on June 1, this year when the court, yet again, adjourned hearing in their case, with no substantial progress made. They had expected a major development having waited for over five years for the court to determine an appeal initiated by Mobil.

    Johnson is one of the 860 Nigerians Mobil employed in late 90s as security personnel to secure its assets in Lagos, Port Harcourt (Rivers State), Eket and Quo-Ibo in Akwa Ibom State. Dispute about whether their employment status arose in early 2000 when the about 27 of them in Eket were issued transfer letters by the Nigeria Police Force, indicating their transfer to Lagos.

    The 27 rejected the purported transfer on the ground that they were not personnel of the Nigeria Police. They complained to Mobil, who claimed it had transferred their employment to the Nigeria Police and thus raising the question of whether the company could alter the terms of their employment without their knowledge and consent.

    It is the workers’ claim that they were employed and paid by the oil company (as reflected in their employment letters tendered in evidence in court); that they were only trained by the police on security operations (under an arrangement between Mobil and the Nigeria Police Force), and that they are entitled to the same benefits as other employees of the oil company.

    On its part, the oil company insists that they should look up to the police for their benefits and other entitlements because it engaged them as supernumerary (SPY) police personnel and not actual staff.

    In the early stage of the dispute, the worker took the matter to the Amnesty International, Council of Chiefs in Akwa Ibom State and Public Complaints Commission in the state for intervention. The three institutions urged amicable settlement and recommended that Mobil accept the Nigerians as its employees based on fact that it had directly employed them, a position Mobil rejected, forcing the 860 employees to head for the court.

    They sued at the Federal High Court, Uyo, which in 2006 held in their favour, prompting the company to appeal to the Court of Appeal, Calabar, Cross Rivers State. The appellate court also held in the workers’ favour in its judgment of May 21, 2009.

    In a unanimous decision, Justices Ngolika Orji-Abadua, Kumai Akaahs and Jean Omokri, who sat on the appeal, held that the Nigerians could not be regarded as staff of the Nigeria Police because “the circumstances, nature, procedure and methods of their employment were not in harmony with the provision of sections 18, 19, 20 and 21 of the Nigeria Police Act.”

    The justices added that, considering the contract of employment the workers entered with the company, the workers “are not members of the Nigeria Police and are therefore, not entitled to be called supernumerary policemen nor to wear or use police uniform or any police kit or insignia calculated to show or portray them as policemen.”

    They ordered Mobil to stop compelling the Nigerians, who served as guards, “to sign the document entitled: ‘Mobil Producing Nigeria status agreement for supernumerary police service conditions’ as same seeks to contravene or breach the provisions of Section 18 of the Nigeria Police Act.”

    Unsatisfied with the decision of the Court of Appeal, Calabar, Mobil appealed to the Supreme Court in 2010. It also applied to the Court of Appeal, Calabar to stay execution of its judgment pending the outcome of the appeal at the Supreme Court, an application the appellate court dismissed for lacking in merit, prompting it to file similar appeal before the apex court.

    Since Mobil lodged its appeal at the Supreme Court in 2010, it has taken no major steps to ensure its prompt determination. Most adjournments have been at its instance. The Supreme Court’s suggestion that parties explore out-of-court settlement became unsuccessful mainly in view of the company’s unwillingness to yield its position.

    When parties returned to court on June one, it was also the unpreparedness on Mobil that foisted an adjournment on the court, prompting the Justice Ibrahim Muhammad led five-man bench to impose N100,000 cost on the company.

    Mobil had, on the previous hearing date earlier this year, informed the court about its intention to amend its appeal to include other grounds other than that of law. But on June 1, when its lawyer, Roland Obaji stood up to move an application seeking the court’s consent to introduce the amendment, the court found that what he filed were defective.

    Lawyer to the workers, Femi Falana (SAN) protested Obaji’s action, noting that the appellant was merely delay proceedings. He noted that parties have filed and exchanged briefs and that the amendment sought by Mobil was to circumvent the ground of objection his clients raised in their notice of objection.

    Ruling, Justice Muhammad elected to further accord Mobil enough time to put its house in order. He awarded N100,000 cost against the company, in favour of the workers and adjourned to October 5.