Abaribe sues Army over Kanu’s whereabouts

Judge absent at proscribed IPOB chief’s trial
Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe (Abia South) has filed an application before a Federal High Court in Abuja demanding payment of N10 million to him for the psychological trauma he has gone through following alleged extra-judicial self-help actions of the Army Chief of Staff.
Abaribe, who appeared as one of the three sureties for the bail granted to the leader of the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu, filed the suit ahead of yesterday’s hearing in the trial of the IPOB leader.
At the last adjourned date, the trial judge, Justice Binta Nyako, had ordered that Abaribe and the other sureties to appear in court to show cause why a bench warrant of arrest should not be granted against them.
However, at the resume of sitting yesterday, Abaribe was in court.
But Justice Nyako did not sit due to the judges’ conference she was attending in Abuja. She adjourned the trial till December 5.
But in the application filed by Abaribe against the army, he is praying for an order of the court compelling the Chief of Army Staff to show cause why the Attorney General of the Federation should not be compelled to initiate contempt charges against him for his extra-judicial self-help conducts that allegedly frustrated the proceedings and course of  administration of justice in the bail and bail bond granted and executed in the trail of Kanu.
The senator said the Chief of Army Staff’s actions ridiculed the court and made its power to appear nugatory as well as placing the applicant in a fixed up position. Abaribe said it was only the army that had the last contact with Kanu that can either produce him or explain the circumstances surrounding his whereabouts.
Abaribe said to his surprise, the army subsequently declared IPOB a terrorist organisation and its members wanted.
He added that all attempts and efforts thereafter made by him to contact Kanu by whatever means failed completely as there was no response and nobody, except the Army, could give any account of him.
|The Nation