The lawmaker representing Kogi West Senatorial District, Senator Dino Melaye, has called on the Nigeria Police Force to release his passport as ordered by a Magistrate’s Court in the Federal Capital Territory.
Melaye said he asked his lawyer, Mike Ozekhome (SAN), to collect the passport on his behalf as he no longer felt safe with the police.
The lawmaker, who briefed journalists in Abuja on Friday, alleged that several attempts by him to get his passport back from the police following a court order had failed.
“The same police have been looking for me to kill me. As I speak to you, I have six arraignments in six different courts for one frivolous charge or the other. No politician has been so humiliated in this country. Six arraignments! There is one by the Federal Government through the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation and five by the Nigeria Police. The latest was on Wednesday last week; there was a fresh arraignment before an FCT High Court,” he said.
Melaye made available to journalists copies of his mandate to Ozekhome to retrieve the passport and the letters from the lawyer’s chamber to the police, asking them to release the lawmaker’s passport.
One of the letters was addressed to the Commissioner of Police, FCT Command and dated July 25, 2018. The other, dated July 31, 2018, was addressed to the Assistant Inspector General of Police, David Igbodo, Legal Adviser to the IG at the Legal/Prosecution Section of the Force Headquarters, Abuja.
Melaye said, “The Magistrate’s Court, on July 25, gave an order that the police should release my passport. This is the copy of the order of the court asking the Nigeria Police to release my passport to me. We wrote the police that day giving them the copy of the order but the police refused to release it, (going) against the order of the court.
“We wrote another letter, saying that I had given the authority to my lawyer to collect it. They still refused to release it, only for the police to tell me that I should come personally and collect it, because they wanted to arrest me.”
The lawmaker said he wrote the police again to remind them that when he was to travel out of Nigeria for medical treatment two months earlier, the court gave an order to the police to release his passport. He said he gave a similar authority to his lawyer, who in turn wrote the police.
“The same police honoured that authority letter and released my passport and I travelled, and on the day I was to return it to the police, I returned it to them. So, there is already a precedence of the police honouring my authority to release my passport to my lawyer,” Melaye said.
Alleging that a policeman told him there was an “order from above” to seize his passport, he stated that the issuer of the order was not above the court.
Melaye said, “If a law enforcement agency is the one breaking the law, then how does it enforce law and order?” (Punch)
