Chidi Lloyd: Court Decides On A-Gs Power, Morrow

The coverage of the Rivers State House of Assembly virtually shifted to the court room, last week may be regarded as the most eventful that focused more on an individual member of the House.

But for the momentary diversion to confirm the power of the Police to invite and question the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Otelemaba Dan Amachree, over the alarm he raised regarding the security of the life of the State Governor and some top government officials, as well as the matter involving the five anti-Amaechi lawmakers and the other 27, the week under review would be best christened “Hon. Chidi Lloyd’s week”.

It started on Sunday with an alarm raised by the Deputy Speaker of the House, Hon. Leyii Kwanee, to the effect that the Leader of the House, Hon. Lloyd was going blind. He explained that the gradual blindness was the result of ill-treatment meted out to Lloyd by the Police while keeping him in their custody.

Such ill-treatment, he said, included being blind-folded, tortured and sprayed with tear-gas all over his body, especially in his eyes as a means of extracting information from him. In order to stop what he called dehumanizing treatment of the Leader, Kwanee said the 27 pro- Amaechi lawmakers were considering taking the matter outside the shores of the country to protect the rights of Hon. Lloyd.

By Tuesday, when the prosecution (Police) was to produce the accused (Lloyd) to make a plea of guilty or not guilty to facilitate his release on bail in the High Court presided over by Justice L. L. Nyordee, they failed to produce him, warranting the defense counsel, Beluolisa Nwofor (SAN) to threaten to pray the court to strike out the matter and sue the prosecution for malicious prosecution if they fail to produce his client the next day. Justice Nyordee had adjourned the matter to Wednesday, after the defense counsel had waited for hours in the court and the prosecution, led by Donald DENwigwe did not turn up.

When the court reconvened on Wednesday, and the Leader was produced, Lloyd’s plea could not be taken because his counsel queried the right of Denwigwe, who is a private lawyer to appear in a criminal charge by the Police without a fiat from the Attorney-General (AG) of  the state. He therefore, urged the court to delist Denwigwe from the counsels to prosecute the matter, pending when the fiat could be granted.

Denwigwe argued that the matter was not initiated by the AG, but by the Commissioner of  Police (CP), hence it does not require him to provide an authority from the AG of the state.

He insisted that the court should rule on the application on the jurisdiction of the prosecution before the plea could be taken.

At a point, the AG, Nworgu Boms, invoked the powers conferred on him by Section 211(1)(b) of the Constitution to take over the prosecution, saying that he was acting with the sense of public duty and law. This announcement, Denwigwe said, was premature because the accused had not been duly arraigned; hence there was nothing for the AG to takeover.

Justice Nyordee therefore adjourned the matter to August 6, 2013, saying that plea cannot be taken and the court cannot make any order on the custody of the accused.

On Thursday, the Speaker of the House, Rt. Hon. Amachree in a press statement appealed to the Police to stop torturing Hon. Lloyd, while also debunking insinuations that he sneaked out into a West African country in order to evade arrest by the Police following Justice Adolphus Enebeli’s judgment that the Police had the right to invite and question him. He explained that he was on official assignment to Windhoek, Namibia where he led the state’s deligation to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) meeting.

On Friday the court reconvened again to hear a bail motion by Chidi Lloyd, but Presiding Judge, Latan Nyordee refused to hear the motion because no plea had been taken in the case preferred against him by the Police. Adjourning the matter to the earlier adjourned date of  August 6, Nyordee held that when an interlocutory application is filed in a criminal charge as serious as the one Lloyd is facing, it is proper for the accused person to be properly arraigned before application for bail can be heard.