The Federal High Court has
granted the State Security Service an approval to keep Omoyele Sowore in
custody for initial 45 days.
Taiwo Taiwo of the Abuja Division
also said the SSS would get additional permission to keep locking Mr Sowore up
for his activism.
Mr Sowore had called for a good
governance revolution in Nigeria last week, drawing immediate fears from
President Muhammadu Buhari and other elements in his government.
Mr Sowore was arrested in Lagos
on August 3 by SSS operatives who stormed his apartment.
The arrest came two days before
the nationwide protest was scheduled to take place on August 5 across the
country.
After keeping Mr Sowore in
custody for more than 48 hours in violation of the law, the SSS asked a federal
judge for permission to further incarcerate him and was granted on Thursday
morning.
Despite the SSS admitting that it
had no evidence of a plot to take over government against Mr Sowore, the judge
still granted the secret police permission to keep him under the anti-terrorism
law.
The remand order was granted
ex-parte, meaning Mr Sowore was not allowed to be represented by a lawyer and
the judge took the decision based on only the claim of the SSS.
The judge, Taiwo Taiwo, ruling on
an ex parte application filed by the SSS, whose operatives arrested Mr Sowore
on August 3 in Lagos, held that the detention order would be renewable after
the expiration of first 45 days on September 21.
The SSS had on Tuesday applied
for permission to keep Mr Sowore for 90 days to investigate him over his call
for revolution ahead of the #RevolutionNow protests which held in some parts of
the country on Monday.
The security agency anchored its
application on the provision of section 27(1) of the Terrorism (Prevention)
Amendment Act.
Ruling on ex parte application, a
one-sided request by the SSS without counter-argument by Mr Sowore’s legal
team, Mr Taiwo, said he had to grant the application, “only to the extent” of
allowing the security agency to keep the respondent in custody for only 45 days
for the applicant to conclude its investigation.
Mr Taiwo said, although the
hearing of the application was one-sided as provided by 27(1) of the Terrorism
(Prevention) Amendment Act, the use of the word, “may”, in the provision “is
directory” and not “discretionary”.
He said he would, therefore, be
failing in his duty not to grant the request for a detention order.
He also said should the applicant
require more time to conclude its investigation after the expiration of the
first 45 days, it had the liberty to apply for its renewal.
Source: Newsflash247
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