November 19, 2019

The court did not seat. The reason given was that the judge was indisposed. The only further detail provided was that the she had some speech and voice problem that prevented her from seating.   This was the 3rd consecutive time in three consecutive months that the court could not seat.   This must have come to you as a surprise and may have left some of you angry and disappointed. But we, in the DPA administration, do not feel disappointed as such. We had previously assessed the situation, generally and specifically, and we did not have high expectations of the Nigerian justice system. Otherwise, what did you think that DPA had been lamenting all this while? We saw this happening to ordinary people in Nigeria. We saw justice failing the people so badly. In fact, we created DPA because we knew that this sort of thing has been happening, and we wanted to stop it.   The impeachment hearing in the US, which involved an entire congressional committee acting as judges, many witnesses located in different parts of the world, complex facts involving many privileged  communications, many subpoenas, thousands of depositions, etc, will be completed before a Nigerian court presided over by one judge can seat for four hours on a simple case. So, there is something deeply wrong with the Nigerian courts.   The case of Emeka Ugwuonye is therefore a laboratory experimentation with the problems that gave rise to DPA. So if this could happen to Emeka Ugwuonye, a Harvard trained Nigerian-American lawyer, the leader of a Human Right organization, what will they do to you, if you were in disagreement with them? They may probably have killed you and your family by now. So, the only thing you should draw out of this is that you need to take DPA seriously. You need to understand that you are not safe in this country. You need to register with DPA. You need to take human rights seriously. You need to support DPA, because supporting DPA means supporting yourself.   We were not surprised by the fact that the court did not seat today. We suspected that it would happen. That was why we never bothered to mobilize our members to attend the trial because we did not want them to leave their work and come for a trial that would not hold. In fact, if you noticed, we did not announce today's trial until few hours before the trial. The reason was because we did not want to bring out our members.   Despite our misgivings we are prepared to face the Mr. Bala Ciroma's men in court, The Founder arrived court by 9:45am, escorted by by over ten warders and prison security officials. He was dressed in white brocade with President Buhari-style cap. He was in great spirit, looking gallant, and beaming with smiles as he alighted from the prison vehicle and sighted some of our members he recognized. Yes, despite the no-notice, some of our members still managed to come. Our leader was happy to meet them.   Communicating through his lawyers, the Founder of DPA urged our members to remain strong and focused. Rather than cry or despair, they should see all that happened as vindication of DPA. It all proved us right. We were right to have said that there is intolerable level of injustice in Nigeria and that the people of this country needed to come together to tackle it. This is yet another vindication. We just witnessed the revelation about Abattoir. We have witnessed the continued police atrocities in Nigeria. We are seeing the positive effects of our advocacy in the recent evacuation of Abattoir detainees, which saved the lives of many detainees. We are proud of various DPA interventions and advocacies which have saved lives in Nigeria.   The Founder also thanked the DPA Admin crew, particularly the Rambo team, for the great work they have done in his absence. He sent his love to all his daughters in DPA and all the members.   Thank you.