Paul Samuel now 25 was released recently from prison
after he was arrested and jailed eight years ago without trial in a case of
mistaken identity.
Samuel who was 17 years old in 2005 was charge for
armed robbery in the name of another suspect, who also bears Paul Samuel. The
real Paul Samuel was arrested in 2010 but he was left in prison nevertheless.
Only recently, his mother Maria Emmanuel found a
lawyer that was able to clarify issues to the court. The court released him on
the ground that he had been in prison without trial over the alleged offence of
armed robbery for eight years.
See more after the cut...
Overwhelmed with joy, his mother Maria danced and
shouted with joy on the court premises of the Lagos High Court, sitting in
Igbosere when Justice Deborah Oluwayemi released her son.
Speaking with Daily Sun, Maria who is a police
corporal at Egbe Idimu Local Government Area, her husband; a retired soldier
said all efforts to get her son released from prison had failed.
According to reports, her son was not brought before
the court since he was arrested at Maryland, Lagos, in 2005 and had been
awaiting advice from Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) since then. She had
sought help from her colleagues at the State Criminal Investigation Department
(SCID), Panti, Yaba where her son was first taken but expressed grief that none
of them even her senior colleagues, could help her.
“When I went to Alagbon Police Station, no one could
help me. They said it is because he was an armed robbery suspect. I did not go
to any senior police officer to help me.
“These past eight years have been terrible for me. I
was fat before but if you now look at me today, you will see that I am thin. I
could not eat or sleep; I was worried, thinking and crying even in the office.
I was running around for my son’s release.
“This was compounded by the retirement of my husband
from the Nigerian Army due to his legs, which were affected during the January
2002 bomb blast at Ikeja Cantonment in Lagos. He can’t work anymore and he has
gone to stay in Bayelsa where we hail from. I am the only one struggling for
everything,” she said.
Breathing the air of freedom, Samuel said being in
prison for eight years has thought him some great life lessons. He vowed to be
careful when picking friends. According to him, all he did was to greet a
friend and he ended up in prison. He noted that the ‘friend’ bailed himself out
without looking back to see how he fared, Sun reports.
“On a Sunday morning, I was on my way to Maryland
when I saw a friend and we greeted. I shook his hands and suddenly, the police
came to raid the place and they arrested everyone they saw. They took everyone
to Panti.
“I could not contact my family to come and bail me
out and I didn’t have money. Many of those people I was detained with bailed
themselves out with money. But those of us that didn’t have money were left and
they charged us before a magistrate court for robbery.
“They dumped us at Kirikiri Prison and later I was
transferred to Ikoyi Prisons where I was taken to Maximum Prisons.
“It is saddening to know that I was in prison for
eight years over a charge of robbery without any trial or anybody showing up as
complainant in the case. One of the things I have learnt now is that I will be
careful of who I choose to be my friend,” he said.
The court also released five other inmates that had
been expecting trial. They included Fatai Amidu, Adebayo Owuade, Gabriel
Samuel, Mike Ofoje and Lawal Karimu.
Mrs. Samuel stated that all her efforts to get her
son out of prison were futile until she met a lawyer, Ahmed Kazeem-Adetola from
a non-governmental organisation, Prisoners Right Advocacy Initiative.
Unable to contain her happiness over the new
developments on the court premises, she enthused: “I am so happy. I have not
started to dance. I want to praise my God. This is the eighth year that I have
been fighting for my son’s freedom. I will call my husband to tell him the good
news.”
However, Paul is hopeful that life after
imprisonment would be better because he learnt how to make shoes and sandals in
prison. He says he wants to make use of that knowledge and to also organise
seminars for people to know how to make shoes.
“At least, I learnt how to make leather shoes,
slippers and sandals during those eight years. I want to be making shoes and I
will be lecturing people on how to make them.
“When I was there, as a devout Catholic, I attached
myself to the church. That was where I was able to get good food and clothes.
Prison food is horrible. It isn’t easy to be in that place for eight years
without freedom, good food, clothes and even sex!”
Reacting to the development, Paul’s lawyer, Kazeem-Adetola,
noted that the problem of prison congestion stemmed from the Federal
Government, Ministry of Justice and the Nigerian police. He said his
organisation had been working hard in the past two years for the release of
inmates, who had been awaiting trial for many years without trial.
“We have filed fundamental human rights
applications, press releases, letters to the Inspector-General of Police and
the Ministry of Justice but these are not enough. We could try Habeas Corpus
but the government, the police and the justice ministry need to sit up and do
the right things.
“For instance, in this particular case, Paul
Samuel’s file was mistaken for another’s with the same name. If they had done a
thorough job, they would have seen that this Paul was arrested in 2005 while
the other one was in 2010.
“Filing applications takes time and the court may
award paltry sums as compensation so we filed an application for 106 inmates
and we can safely say today that 90 people have been released.
“Filing fundamental rights application may be
misconstrued as an avenue to get money, so we have decided not to file such
now,” he said. (Via Sunnews)
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