An Ikeja High Court, Lagos, yesterday dismissed the fundamental rights application filed by Registered Trustees of World Evangelism Incorporated alongside Prophet Samson Ayorinde and Rev Harold Chinoyerem, seeking to restrain the police from arresting them over issuance of N118 million dud cheque.
Justice Yetunde Adesanya dismissed Ayorinde’s application on the grounds that the police could not be restrained from inviting, arresting and detaining the applicant in the course of their investigation. Delivering judgement in the suit, the judge ruled that restraining the law enforcement agency from arresting a person alleged to have committed an offence amounted to abuse of judicial power. She said: “On the totality of the foregoing that there has been no harassment, intimidation, threat of arrest or detention of the applicants.
I must also find and hold that the police cannot be restrained from inviting arresting (where necessary) and detained the 1st and 3rd applicant in the course of its investigation as prescribed by law.” Adesanya therefore warned the police not to publish the applicants’ names on any police bulletin or any medium for purpose of declaring them wanted persons.
In a fundamental rights suit marked D/6724MFHR/2018 seeking the protection of the court, Ayorinde and other applicants argued that the harassment, intimidation, threat of arrest, detention and invitation by the police at the instance of some people violated the fundamental rights to personal liberty as guaranteed under Sections 34 and 35 of Nigerian constitution.
The applicants instituted the suit through their lawyer, Emmanuel Benjamin, against the respondents – Mr. Oludare Amos Aturamu, Mrs. Kemi Adesanya, Smart Link Property Services, Commissioner of Police, Lagos, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) in-charge of State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Panti, Lagos and SP Alhaji Aminu of SCIID, Panti, Lagos. The prophet and others had also sort the order of the court to restrain the police, their agents, privies, servants from inviting, arresting, detaining, harassing and molesting or any manner infringing on their rights and an order restraining the police from publishing their names in any police bulletin or any medium for the purpose of declaring them wanted.
The applicants also prayed the court to order the police to pay them N4 million as compensation for breach of their fundamental rights However, the police in an affidavit filed before the court, urged the court to dismiss the suit. Counsel to the police, Mr. Samsideen Adebesin, averred that the police received a petition from Aturamu, Adesanya and Smart Link Services, wherein they alleged that Ayorinde obtained a loan of N30 million from them sometime in August 2016 for the expansion of his church, with the promise that the loan would be refunded within two months with interest rate of 30 per cent. According to Adebesin, the petitioners alleged that not quite long after the loan was granted to Ayorinde that he travelled out for medical vacation to attend to his health, only to come back to the country in July 2017.
The counsel added that when Ayorinde could not repay the loan, the interest rate was reduced to 22.5 per cent as a mark of good gesture. He said: “Ayorinde was being investigated on a criminal complaint of issuance of dud cheques and upon receiving the complaint, Ayorinde did not present himself to the police. “But sometime in August 2017, he volunteered a statement in reaction to the allegation against him and he was granted administrative bail.”
