Uzodimma’s ex-commissioner files N5m suit against police over detention
By Jeffrey Agbo
Fabian Ihekweme, a former Commissioner for Foreign and International Affairs in Imo State, has filed a N5 million lawsuit against the Nigeria Police Force at the Federal High Court in Abuja.
Ihekweme, who was commissioner in the first tenure of Governor Hope Uzodimma, alleges unlawful arrest and detention by the police following his arrest in Abuja on November 28, 2024.
The suit, filed on Monday by his lawyer, Kingdom Okere, is marked FHC/ABI/CS/1809/2024 and names the Nigerian Police Force and the Commissioner of Police (CP), Imo State Command, as respondents.
The applicant seeks an order of perpetual injunction restraining the police from further arresting, threat of adoption, detention, intimidation, assault and harassing him over frivolous and unsubstantiated allegation concerning his fundamental rights to freedom of expression.
He seeks “a declaration that his arrest on November 28, 2024 in Abuja in most strange, intimidating, threatening, embarrassing, bizarre and gestapo manner by the Police in Imo State Command, who assaulted him, constitutes an infringement of his fundamental human rights and that, his continuous detention by the police amounts to the violation of his fundamental human rights.”
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Ihekweme further urged the court to declare that, denying him access to his team of lawyers by the police since November 28, when he was arrested in Abuja and taken to Owerri, violated his fundamental human rights.
He, therefore, sought an order awarding the sum of N5 million as damages against the police commissioner for his alleged harassment, assault and illegal detention.
In an affidavit filed by his wife, Mrs. Excel Ihekweme, she raised concerns about her husband’s severe health condition. She emphasised that his continued detention without proper medical care poses a significant risk to his life.
She averred “that the applicant is now suffering double jeopardy of unlawful detention and imminent health risk that could endanger his life.”
The suit is yet to be assigned to a judge.
