The Nigerian Correctional Service (NCoS) has dismissed as baseless reports that the suspended Inspector General of Police’s Intelligence Response Team (IGP-IRT) commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari has been attacked by fellow inmates at the Kuje Correctional Centre, Abuja.
At the resuming hearing of his trial for alleged drug trafficking at a Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday, the lead counsel to Kyari and suspended Assistant Commissioner of Police Sunday Ubia, Chief Onyechi Ikpeazu, SAN, urged Justice Emeka Nwite to admit them and two other defendants to a bail because their lives in the Kuje Correctional Centre were unsafe.
Ikpeazu said that an application seeking bail for the four defendants had been filed and served on the National Drug Law and Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), adding that the application became necessary due to the nature of the work the defendants had done in the course of policing the country.
But the Correctional Service described the reports as “false, reckless and mischievous”.
In a statement signed by the NCoS’ spokesman, Francis Enobore, the Service eplained: “For the record, Abba Kyari is one of the over 800 inmates in the location where he is being kept and notable individuals including ex-Governors, Ministers, Senators and other celebrities of higher social status have passed through the same facility without any threat to their lives.
“The authorities of the NCoS did not and has no course to request for the transfer of Abba Kyari or indeed, any inmate to any other detention centre outside its jurisdiction because there is no justification for such request. Abba Kyari is safe and sound and goes about his daily routine like any other inmate, unharmed.
“Those playing pranks with his detention are warned to desist from such unpatriotic acts as they may be asked, through formal litigation, to justify their statement”.
Ikpeazu had told the court that the defendants were being remanded with criminals in the correctional centre, who through them, their arrests were made possible.
The senior lawyer said their lives were at risk, hence, the need for their bail.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that four suspended police officers, including Ubia, Assistant Suprentendent of Police Bawa James, Inspectors Simon Agirigba and John Nuhu are being charged by the NDLEA for alleged drug offence alongside Kyari.
However, while Kyari, Ubia, Agirigba and Nuhu sought for bail over alleged threat to their lives, James, the third defendant, did not.
