| credits:
No
fewer than 30 lawyers have indicated their willingness to challenge the
demolition of the Upper Class Hotel, Onitsha, owned by Chief
Bonaventure Mokwe, on the orders of the Anambra State Governor, Peter
Obi.
The governor last Friday ordered the
demolition following the discovery of two human heads and some firearms
in the hotel, located at the Old Market Road, Onitsha, last Thursday.
The lawyers, in their separate petitions
to the Inspector-General of Police and the Commissioner of Police,
Anambra State, described the demolition as “hasty and a display of
jungle justice.”
Leading the lawyers were Dr. M. Umenweke and F. Ibeh.
The lawyers, who said Mokwe was known in Onitsha, added that there was no proper investigation before the demolition took place.
They said they would approach the High
Court in Onitsha on Monday (today) to enforce Mokwe’s fundamental rights
as guaranteed by law.
In one of the petitions entitled, ‘A
trump up allegation against Chief Bonaventure Mokwe,’ Kachi Bielu and
Co. appealed to the police leadership to organise a full scale
investigation into the matter in order to unravel the persons behind the
“frame up” against their client.
It read, “It is our instruction to
appeal to you to use your good offices to send a crack team from the
Force Criminal Investigation Department or the monitoring unit and
transfer the case to a police formation, where the case will be properly
handled and investigated.”
Also, Umenweke and Ibeh, leading over 30
other lawyers, described as stage-managed the “arrest, detention and
humiliation” of Mokwe.
The lawyers alleged that some people “smuggled” the human skulls into the premises in order to incriminate the hotel proprietor.
They further demanded to know who made
the complaint to the police and why government should demolish the
hotel, which they said was Mokwe’s only evidence.
0 Comments