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Magistrate decries non- deployment of police in court

By Editorial board
28 April 2015   |   3:17 am
WORRIED by the porous security in his court, the presiding Magistrate of Ndiawa Magistrate”s court Ideato North Local Council, Austin Onyenze, has decried the non-deployment of police personnel to provide security in his court despite the sensitive cases his court was handling.
Image source Dalje

Image source Dalje

Adjourns theft case till May 20

WORRIED by the porous security in his court, the presiding Magistrate of Ndiawa Magistrate”s court Ideato North Local Council, Austin Onyenze, has decried the non-deployment of police personnel to provide security in his court despite the sensitive cases his court was handling.

Onyenze lamented this last week after he adjourned till May 20, a case of alleged “conspiracy, theft and destruction of property valued at N3 million belonging to Chidinma Jideofor Okoro, a Knight of Catholic Church, against the duo of a father and son, Chief Hilary Ohia, and Uche, a lawyer, respectively.

The Magistrate regretted that despite his appeals to the police authorities in the state, they were yet to send any police office to guard the court premises against any attack from hoodlums.

He lamented: “We need police security here. Despite all the applications for that, the police command is yet to send anyone to this court. This is unfortunate and not proper.”

Contributing, a Chief State Counsel, Mrs. Faustina N. Ojinika also complained about the porous security in the court, asking that urgent steps be taken to provide such in view of the nature of the matter and others.

She notified the court on the absence of the defendants’ counsel, A.A. Dim, regretting that fire razed his Chambers, destroying all his books and documents. The situation, she said, prompted his demand for adjournment of the matter till May 20, when he would have assembled documents on the matter.

Ojinika had a few months ago urged the court to categorize the matter in suit number MID/2c/2014 a criminal one citing Criminal Procedure Act (CPA), section 167.

The complainant, Okoro, is a kinsman to the accused persons.

A witness and father of the complainant, Mazi Chidinma Jonathan Okoro, in his Evidence in Chief, had argued that the accused committed the crime, not minding that the remains of their mother were buried in the premises in 1992, before the alleged issue of the ownership of the property came up, alleging that one of the accused persons, Hilary, attended the burial ceremony.

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