INTRODUCTION:
(1)(a) On November 14, 2018, a police officer from the Office of the Commissioner of Police, FCT Abuja Command, CP Bala Ciroma, served on Barrister Emeka Ugwuonye (hereinafter “Emeka”) summons, charging him with armed robbery and murder, offences the police knew that Emeka could not have committed and absolutely did not commit. The charges were purely an effort to use the prosecutorial power of the police to silence Emeka, who was in the process of exposing a 15 billion naira (annual revenue) of illegal prison and racketeering and other illegal operations run by Mr. Bala Chiroma and some other police officers in Abuja alone.
(b) Upon serving Emeka with the summons, the police officer said to him: “You better go back to the US”. Mr. Ciroma expected Emeka to leave Nigeria upon being served with the summons. Hence he did not arrest Emeka for murder even after serving him the court processes that charged him with murder and armed robbery. But when Emeka remained defiant and refused to leave Nigeria as expected, he was arrested on November 26, 2018 on those charges.
(c) After sixteen days in police cell, was arraigned before Justice ———— of Court 30, FCT High Court, Gude. And he has been remanded in Kuje prison since then.
THE MAIN STORY:
(2) In October 2012, after the killing of 4 Uniport students in Aluu, Rivers State, Emeka set up a a group known as “UNIPORT 4” to fight against jungle justice in Nigeria. In February 2013, UNIPORT 4 was renamed The Due Process Advocates (DPA). From 2013 through 2015, DPA was run and managed as a public interest arm of ECULAW, which is the law firm headed by Emeka.
(3) In 2015, Emeka opened a branch of DPA operations in Nigeria and he expanded the activities of DPA to make real change in Nigeria in the area of administration of justice. He expanded the focus of DPA from the prevention of jungle or mob justice to prevention of other forms of injustice such as police brutality, domestic violence and human trafficking, etc. Membership of DPA rose from 33,000 by end of 2015 to 66,000 by June of 2016. Subsequently, DPA was registered as a corporation both in the United States and Nigeria.
(4) On May 25, 2016, Emeka traveled back to the US for what he had planned to be a 2 months summer vacation. On or around June 11, 2016, while in the US, Emeka began to receive inbox messages on Facebook and WhatsApp from various members of DPA informing him about a woman based in Abuja who had gone missing for a whole month. They all wanted DPA to help look for the woman or find what happened to her. The woman’s name was Charity Aiyedegbon, with an alias “Chacha de Hammer”. Those who called or inboxed Emeka directed him to the woman’s two Facebook profiles. Also, those who contacted Emeka told him that Chacha had been having a long standing dispute with her husband, David Aiyedegbon (David).
(5) Emeka never heard of these names (David and Chacha) before June 11, 2016. He had no idea about their existence before that date.
(6) As a criminal defense lawyer and investigator, Emeka started his investigation into the case by carefully examining Chacha’s two Facebook profiles. Immediately, he began to put a pattern to Chacha’s life, as he tried to reconstruct events around her within the last days she was seen. Emeka noticed that Chach’s social media activity ended on May 9, 2016, as that was the last day she made a status update on her Facebook profiles. That was also the day she was said to have been last seen.
(7) Note that even before contacting Emeka, friends of Chacha had been looking for her since she went missing. The police already arrested Chacha’s friend, one man known as JO or John, and detained him for over two weeks. So, when Emeka got involve in the investigation, he already had a 4-week period of police supposed investigation on the case. The police failed to make progress other than to arrest and torture John, who apparently knew nothing about what happened to Chacha. Also, within that period, the police arrested four lawyers from the law firm that represented Chacha in her cases against David. Emeka was worried that the police seemed to have turned blind eye to other theories of what happened and focused only on Chacha’s known male friends and her lawyers. And it was Chacha’s estranged husband (David) that was supplying the names of the men to the police and dictating who should be arrested and who should not. Hence, the police arrested Chacha’s lawyers just because David didn’t like them. Emeka was shocked to know that it was David that was funding the police investigation and he was calling the shots for the police. David was practically directing the investigation.
(8)) Before her disappearance, Chacha wrote twelve pieces of the account of her marriage with David, disclosing in shocking details the problems in their marriage, the serial infidelity, the attempts on her life by David, the six cases she filed in court against David and how she moved out of their marital home and lived apart for two years before the date she disappeared. In her writings, Chacha called for help. She believed that David was after her life.
(9) To lead the DPA investigation in the case, Emeka cut short his vacation in the US and returned to Nigeria on June 19, 2016. Emeka made some posts on DPA wall addressing DPA members. In the post, he disclosed the progress of DPA investigation. He indicated that he believed that Chacha was not hiding, as the David and the police were trying to make people believe. He theorized that Chacha was probably dead or in captivity. He called for information on any unexplained death around the time and place as Chacha was last seen. He urged members of DPA and Chacha’s friends to expand their search to include the possibility that Chacha was dead.
(10) Information began to come into DPA about an unidentified body of a woman found in Bwari, in Abuja, around the time Chacha went missing. On 23rd of June 2016, somebody sent to Emeka, through an email, a picture obtained from the Bwari Council Sanitation Authority. The pictures were the headless and decapitated body of a woman. Without a head it was impossible to compare the picture with the pictures of Chacha as on her Facebook profiles. However, Emeka was able to forward the pictures to Chacha’s friends who confirmed the body was probably Chacha’s. Emeka published the findings on DPA Facebook handle.
(11) Surprisingly, the police fought to suppress DPA’s investigation and findings. The first move the police made was to arrest Emeka Ugwuonye on July 1, 2016 for the offense of concealment. What did Emeka conceal? The police claimed that he concealed the pictures of the body of the woman he made Facebook posts on. But on July 2, 2016, the police realized that it was actually the police in Bwari that took those pictures and handed them over to the Sanitation authority, from where it was obtained lawfully by DPA. So, Emeka could not have concealed from the police pictures that were taken by the police. So, they let him go. But it was clear that the police were interested in covering up the truth in the Chacha case.
(12) Believing that the police were looking in the wrong direction by pursuing Chacha’s male friends, Emeka and DPA were determined to ensure that any of those men arrested would be represented by Counsel. So, when Kelvin, another friend of Chacha, was arrested, Emeka sent a lawyer to secure his release and that was successful. At this point, Emeka did not know of the person called Paul Chukwujekwu Ezeugwu (Jekwu), another male friend of Chacha. Jekwu was first mentioned to the hearing of Emeka in mid July 2016 when he reported to the police station as they directed him. He overheard the police talking of a 24-year old male friend of Chacha.
(13) Another clear sign that the police were not interested in the truth of the case was that the police refused to conduct any tests on the remains of the woman even after DPA had located (with the help of the Sanitation Authority) the unmarked grave in the public cemetery. Instead, the police and David falsely claimed that they conducted tests and the result showed it was not Chacha’s body. They threatened to sue Emeka for providing false information to the police. What was the false information? The false information was the claim that the body was Chacha’s body. So, the police and David denied the body for nearly two years. But DPA continued to fight for justice for Chacha.
(14) On August 3, 2016, the case was taken over by the IG Monitoring Unit (one of the police commands directly under the Inspector General of the Police). DPA complained to the Deputy Commissioner in charge of the Unit that the police are refusing to investigate evidence presented to them, which would reveal the truth. The Deputy Commissioner assured DPA that the police would investigate the matter fully and properly. Based on this assurance, DPA suspended all postings on the case, while waiting for the outcome of police investigation.
(15) To prevent any investigation by the IG Monitoring Unit, the file was transfered back to the Abuja Command where David had more influence. The police at the command realized that they could not really deny the body in the pictures. So they changed gear. They decided to accept it was Chacha’s body, only if they could find a suitable person to pin Chacha’s death on. As they didn’t have such person immediately, everywhere remained quiet for nearly two years.
(16) In or around May 2018, Jekwu was arrested in Benin City and taken to Abuja on Chacha’s case. About 3 or 4 weeks after, Jekwu and another man (one Emmanuel Adogah) were paraded and were said to have confessed to the murder of Chacha. DPA nearly accepted the news of their confession as the end of the case. But when Emeka saw the video of the parade, he noticed some glaring abnormalities. Example: The suspects had been in detention for weeks and made confessions and were paraded without any of them having a lawyer. Secondly, Jekwu had a massive fresh wound on his forehead, evidence of injury or torture. So, naturally, DPA questioned the voluntariness of the confession. And considering the comments of Police Commissioner Bello and David during the parade, DPA cruticized the police for incompetence.
(17) Based on DPA’s continued criticism of the police for the poor handling of the Chacha case, the Abuja Command arrested Emeka on July 6, 2018 and detained him at Abattoir, the same place Jekwu and Emmanuel Adogah were detained. It was on July 6, 2018 at the Abattoir detention center that Emeka met Jekwu and Adogah for first time in his life.
(18) Emeka saw his detention in Abattoir to interview Jekwu and Adogah about any involvement in the disappearance of Chacha, and they adamantly maintained that they did not commit the crime and that they were forced to confess through extreme torture. According to Adogah, he never met Chacha in his life and he knew what she looked like only when the police asked him to hold her picture during the time he and Jekwu were paraded by the police.
(19) Emeka spent July 6 to July 10, 2018 in Abattoir. During his stay in Abattoir, he saw and heard about the extreme atrocities and crimes against humanity committed by the police in Abattoir. He was totally devastated to discover the activities of men of Nigerian police, which clearly qualified for crimes against humanity in terms of gravity, scale and systemic or institutionalized nature of these atrocities. Emeka could not have believed if he did not witness it.
(20) Immediately, DPA began to seek for ways to show the world what has been going on in Abattoir, how the police ran an illegal prison and used it as a cruel animal farm, where the animals are human beings.
(21) After his release from custody, DPA began to make a documentary film to expose the police activities in Abattoir. On, October 15, 2018, DPA released the two-minutes introduction of the documentary. On October 16, 2018, the Abuja Command arrested Emeka again and detained him at Garki station for two days. They charged him to court on October 18, 2018. He was again granted bail.
(22) Determined to totally silence Emeka and DPA, Police Commissioner Bala Ciroma charged Emeka along with Jekwu and Adogah with armed robbery and murder of Chacha.
(23) The police calculated that with a murder charge some High Court judges will be too timid or too scared to grant bail. And true to their calculation, the judge in the case denied bail, even without reading the proof of evidence.
(24) Nigerian police fabricated murder charge against a critic as a way of shutting him up. This is actually a very routine and common practice among the Abuja command. DPA estimates that over half of the armed robbery, kidnapping and murder cases in Abuja command are fabricated either to cover up the truth or silence someone about to expose them.
(25) Due to the continued harassment and persecution of Emeka, he has suffered incalculable loses, including disruption of his family life, disruption and destruction of his businesses, unlawful detention, physical assault, damage to reputation, etc.
OUR PRAYERS ARE:
(a) That there be full and proper investigation into Chacha’s case to be done by new set of police officer not connected to Mr. Bala Ciroma.
(b) That the murder and armed robbery charges against Emeka Ugwuonye be withdrawn or dismissed.
(c) That in the alternative, the office of the Attorney-General or Director of Public Prosecution should take over the prosecution in relation to Chacha’s case.
(d) That an independent investigation be conducted into the activities of the police in respect of the Abattoir detention center.
(e) That adequate compensation be paid to Emeka Ugwuonye by the police for gross abuse of his rights.
Signed: Due Process Advocates, DPA
