By Ishaya Ibrahim
There may be hope for Deji Adeyanju, the activist who is being held at the Kano Central Prison in the last two months.
On Twitter, Nigerians asked the new IGP, Adamu Mohammed, to look into Adeyanju’s case. This is after the police twitter handle tweeted that the new IGP would respect the rights of Nigerians in the discharge of his duty.
The police replied that it would look into the case of the activist.
Adeyanju was arrested for leading a protest to the Force Headquarters over police alleged bias in the Akwa Ibom House of Assembly crisis in November 2018.
After some days in police detention, he was released without his phones. When he returned to retrieve them, he was re-arrested. This time, over what the police said was a murder charge he allegedly committed in 2005 while he was a student at the Bayero University, Kano.
The Magistrate, however, said he does not have the jurisdiction to entertain the case. He then remanded the activist in prison custody until February 6 when the case would be reassigned to a High Court
But the man who defended Adeyanju at the time, Festus Keyamo, now the spokesperson for the Buhari campaign organisation, clarified that Adeyanju was discharged and acquitted in that case which ended in 2009. The police nonetheless, arraigned the activist before a Kano Magistrate Court.