The Department of State Services (DSS), a secret police agency, has come under fire from the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) for its agents’ altercation with members of the Nigerian Correctional Service (NCS) on Tuesday at the Federal High Court in Lagos.
The argument centred on which agency maintains custody of suspended CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele after the court granted him bail.
The troubled CBN governor was then taken into custody again by the DSS.
When Justice Nicholas Oweibo granted bail to the suspended CBN governor who had been charged with illegally possessing firearms, there was drama between the officials of the Nigerian Correctional Service and their DSS counterparts at the Federal High Court on Tuesday. DSS refused to let the prison officials take custody of Emefiele as the court had ordered.
On Tuesday, there was a brawl between agency representatives at the court, and one senior prison official was injured.
However, shortly after the altercation, a senior female DSS official showed up at the court and briefly spoke with prison officials before they left.
The Nigerian Bar Association responded to the incident on Wednesday with a statement signed by its National Publicity Secretary, Akorede Habeeb Lawal, denouncing it as “despicable” and showing blatant disrespect for the integrity of the legal system and court grounds.
“The NBA has particularly denounced the DSS for its peculiar part in the disgraceful and unlawful conduct,” the statement read. “Considering that the Court had earlier ordered that the suspended CBN Governor be kept in a Correctional Centre pending the perfection of his bail conditions,” it continued.
The NBA President, Mr. Yakubu Chonoko Maikyau (SAN), is quoted as saying in the statement, “The courts and judicial processes remain the barometer by which the conduct of persons or agencies of government are gauged in assessing the rule of law.”
The incident, according to Maikyau, was “further evidence of the lack of discipline and absence of professionalism that continues to plague key security institutions in Nigeria, which, without a doubt, is largely responsible for the limited progress in achieving a coordinated response to security concerns across the country.”
According to the NBA President, it is detrimental to our security as a country and a recipe for anarchy and chaos when federal government employees fight in front of the general public for any reason.
It is imperative that the DSS and NCoS collaborate in order to uphold justice in a secure Nigeria. They are both significant institutions that deal with national security and administration of justice, respectively.
The statement continued, “While it is difficult not to hold the leadership of the two federal government agencies directly responsible for the shameful and disgraceful conduct of the personnel, the NBA President has particularly called on the two agencies to take immediate disciplinary measures against the officers involved in this disgraceful conduct.”
Additionally, Maikyau called for “a complete overhaul of the institutions and a total reorientation of the personnel, to achieve professionalism and ensure synergy in the discharge of their respective constitutional responsibilities.”
