Lagos Panel Awards ₦7.5m To Man Remanded Six Years Without Trial

• Nwadi said he was detained for three months at the police cell because he could not provide a sum of ₦10,000

A victim of police abuse has been awarded ₦7.5 million by the Lagos Judicial Panel on Friday for the ordeal he went through.

Chidiebere Nwadi was arrested on his first day in Lagos in 1999 and was detained. He was thereafter remanded in prison where he spent six years without any offence, charge or trial against him.

According to 40-year-old Nwadi, he was 18 years at the time of arrest and was in prison up till 2004, wasting his prime age in the prison.

The petitioner, who first appeared before the panel on November 28, 2020, narrated that he was detained and tortured by police officers hours after he arrived the state from the Southeast in 1999.

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He left Abia state in May 1999 to see his brother in Lagos, but on arrival, he said he had no means to contact his brother and was stranded before his encounter with the police.

Nwadi said he was detained for three months at the police cell because he could not provide a sum of ₦10,000 allegedly demanded by the police.

He told the panel that he was taken to a nearby court where he was charged with armed robbery and sent to Kirikiri Medium Prison.

The victim said he was released in 2004 with help from a missionary from the Catholic church.

In her ruling on Nwadi’s case on Friday, Chairman of the panel, Doris Okuwobi, said they found that the petitioner was tortured and abused by officers of the Nigerian Police at different times without any justification.

The retired judge said the petitioner was incarcerated by the Nigerian Police Force at the prime of his life without justification for six years and was never tried for a crime.

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