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One wonders if you had noticed so much discussion going on in America and Europe over the impact of the tech giants like Google, Facebook, etc. These are impacts on privacy, liberty, free speech, control on personal choices, crime, etc. In fact, the countries where these tech giants originated are very concerned and they feel a need to control the tech giants through regulation.

Equally, the governments of Africa, like Nigeria's, are concerned about the effect of the technological resources controlled by the tech giants. But Nigeria is not seeking to control the tech giants, which they cannot do. Instead, Nigerian government is seeking to control its citizen's use of the technology. Hence, Nigeria is experimenting with a new law that will make hate speech a capital offense, a wholly terrible idea.

Regarding the approaches adopted by various governments, there is the question of the user or consumer attitude and dependency. Do the consumers understand the actual and potential dangers of the use of these tech services? Apparently not, especially in developing countries such as Nigeria.

The worst harm coming from the services of the tech giants is the effect of fake news. A wholly false story could be peddled against a person or group or about a situation . Such manipulative and malicious contents influence people's real judgment and decisions about a person or group. The consequence could be devastating both to the target and the society.

As is now apparent, state actors and powerful companies have used manipulative contents and fake accounts to generate fake news that have toppled governments and changed the outcome of elections. Also, on smaller scales, fake news and manipulative contents have been used to attack individuals.

One interesting example of this was Sahara Reporter's false stories about Attorney Emeka Ugwuonye, a Nigerian-American lawyer, and Founder of DPA. Sahara Reporters falsely published that Ugwuonye was disbarred in the United States (No judgment of disbarment was ever tendered, and most people did not understand that a person cannot be disbarred without a final judgment by the highest court in the jurisdiction, which is the court that grants the license to practice as a lawyer). Also, after a while, Sahara Reporters began to report that Ugwuonye was disbarred in Nigeria. All these were false but with devastating consequences.

Who needs protection from the manipulative contents spread through Facebook and co? Different governments adopt different approaches. America and Europe want to protect consumers. But third world governments such as Nigeria, Iran, etc want to protect government and government officials. In Emeka Ugwuonye's case, the Nigerian government used fake news against Ugwuonye to deflect Ugwuonye's legitimate criticism of government.  Nigerian Government officials are not interested in protecting the user/consumer, but rather in protecting themselves.  Hence Nigeria's hate speech law. It will be an extraordinary complexity for a country like Nigeria to effectively regulate hate speech. Every criticism of government will arm the police with another opportunity to extort money from citizens.

A probably better approach is to educate the users and consumers on the dangers of abuses in the system. Also, the tech giants should do a lot more of self-policing. Facebook closed five billion fake accounts in 2019 alone. These were accounts created with fake or false identities. They should also respond better to fake contents, aside from fake accounts.

 

All in all, the dangers of fake accounts and malicious and manipulative contents otherwise known as fake news cannot be over-emphasized.

The answer to the captioned question is very simple. It is because the Chief Judge and the Chief Magistrate are indirectly responsible for those atrocities. Ask me how. If the Chief Judge and the Chief Magistrate had performed their statutory functions as provided in Section 34 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015, (ACJA) there would be virtually no atrocities in Abattoir or other police detention centers in Abuja. I have attached a screenshot of Section 34 of ACJA for you to read through. Section 34 provides that the Chief Magistrate is to visit the police stations every month. It further provides that during such visit, the Chief Magistrate may call for and inspect the record of arrests; direct the arraignment of the suspect, grant bail to suspects. That section also provides that the officers in charge of a police station shall make available to the visiting Chief Magistrate the full record of arrest and record of bail, etc. And any officer who fails to do so will be punished. This is the function the Chief Judge and the Chief Magistrate, particularly the Chief Magistrate, failed to perform all these years. They waited until DPA wrote petitions before they started performing their duties. By then, thousands of Nigerians have died in police custody. DPA is considering suing the Chief Judge and Chief Magistrate and the police for this. We just can't take it quietly.  

The police arrested and detained thousands of people without charging them to court as the constitution demanded. People were detained for over 24 months instead of the 24 hours the constitution demanded. People were extorted and even killed or dumped to starve to death in Abattoir and other police detention centers. After DPA began to draw the attention of the world to the problem, the courts of Abuja jumped into action, but the situation was already too bad. On 4th and 5th November the court evacuated hundreds of detainees and remanded them in prison and set Monday and Tuesday (18th and 19th November) for their appearance in court. But how can any court try 400 people at once? That was the problem the Chief Judge realized today. 160 of these wretched victims were to appear in court today. But that was canceled. First, there were not enough police personnel in Abuja because they had gone for their best assignments - elections in Bayelsa and Kogi. And police are needed to help control 160 criminal defendants in court. What if they decide to run away, they must have wondered. The prisons don't have enough handcuffs for all of them at once. For these reasons today's court was canceled. That was unfortunate because effort had been made to send lawyers to the intended court. The solution now is to move the court again back to Abattoir. It will be a court in the open. The detainees will be bused back to Abattoir. Trial will be held there. Those that can be set free will be set free and those that may need to be remanded will return to the prison. (None will be held in Abattoir again. We believe that they now know that human beings cannot be detained in Abattoir). So, tomorrow, there will be a new chapter in Nigerian justice. 160 people will stand trial in one location at once. About 25 judges will participate in this trial bonanza. This is the problem created by the police. DPA is monitoring the situation closely.

Fear is a weapon the bad guys use to put everybody to silence. Most Nigerians understand that many police officers in the Nigerian police force have gone rogue. But the situation is actually worse. There are many deadly criminals in the police force. They are the kidnappers. They are the armed robbers. They are the assassins. They put fear in you and control you by that. Abattoir secret prison in Abuja is just one of the evil machinations of the police. Even the IG may not understand all that is going on in Abattoir. We have heard of cases where the policemen would hide some Abattoir inmates when they knew the IGP was visiting. In other words, it is not only the judges they hide inmates from. They have done it to an IGP and many external visitors like human rights groups and Red Cross. How do they hide hundreds of people? We know that many people would wonder: How can they hide so many people? This is how they do it:  The area known as Abattoir is a large area located on a rocky landspace. There is no drive-through or access. It is like going into a hill that you cannot drive through and you have to exit through the same gate you came in through. When you enter the area called abattoir, you will see only the offices toward the front left. Deep in the hill behind the offices, toward the right, is a monstrous building. You can't see anything from outside looking in. That is the main Abattoir detention cell. That cell contains about 1000 detainees at any given time. Nobody sees those detainees, except the police and few privileged people. It is a highly secure and highly controlled facility. Nobody goes to that building unless you are a detainee being led to the cell or you are one of the officers that work there. There are many other buildings and spaces hidden behind the offices. Those are not accessible to visitors either. Whenever a human right group comes to see things in Abattoir, normally they would come on a schedule. They normally would arrive by 10am to 12noon. Early that morning, the police would come to Abattoir cell and march all physically able detainees to the buildings behind the offices to the left. Those who are too weak to walk would be carried by other inmates. These would be kept in that place until the visitors had left. Of course, they would not take every detainee out of the cell. Otherwise, that would look suspicious. They will leave some inmates, about 50, usually those that are physically able and not showing any visible torture injuries and those who have been in detention for only a few weeks. Those are the ones the visitors will meet. Even at that, the police will warn those detainees not to say anything outside what they are told to say. The police will be with the visitors each time they are talking to a detainee. If an inmate would try to tip the visitors off, that will be the end of his life. We heard of a detainee who dared to reveal the truth about his case. The detainee had been in detention for more than one year. The officer handling his case told him to say he had been in detention for only two weeks. But when the visitors asked him, he told them he had been in detention for 14 months. The visitors screamed and requested that the man be freed or charged to court. Because of his case, the visitors scheduled to come back after one month. When they came back and asked, they were told that the man had been released as they requested. They left satisfied. Meanwhile, the man was killed for not doing as he was told.   Abattoir is certainly not the only such secret prison or killing ground used by the Nigerian police. DPA knows there are more. But Nigerians must be aware of the existence of such places. Human civilization has gone beyond the point where we would keep quiet out of fear. DPA will do whatever is possible to expose Abattoir and other secret prisons. We have videos and pictures of Abattoir. We have made these pictures available to critical individuals within and outside Nigeria. We made them part of our petitions to international agencies and the diplomatic community and foreign news agencies.   DPA just has to expose Abattoir in order to stop the atrocities. You will recall that in October of 2018, when we first tried to expose Abattoir, Mr. Bala Ciroma, (Commissioner of Police for Abuja) and Mr. Jimoh Moshood (then the Police PRO) looked the world in the yes and denied the existence of Abattoir, and they falsely accused DPA Founder of being a criminal. Now, let the world know the role of these police officers in the human slaughter that has occurred in Abattoir.   Having our Founder in detention is not enough to stop DPA. Indeed, DPA operations do not depend on the Founder. We can operate from our overseas locations once we have gathered the evidence in Nigeria.

When DPA started sending out petitions against police atrocities in Abattoir on 7th October, 2019, we did not initially send any to the Chief Judge of FCT Abuja. Rather, we sent to the National Assembly (the House of Rep and the Senate). We sent to the Presidency (President and Vice President). We sent to the Attorney General and the Chief Justice of Nigeria and the IG of police, but of course we sent to major international agencies and foreign governments.. We are not exactly sure how our petition made it to the Chief Judge of Abuja. But because our petition hammered on Abattoir atrocities either the Attorney General or the Chief Justice or someone in the presidency forwarded it to the attention of the Chief Judge, who liaised with the chief Magistrate. We suspect that the Attorney General might be at least one of those who contacted the Chief Judge. The reason we suspect the Attorney General is that the same week the Chief Judge first tried to visit Abattoir,  Justice Kekemeke of the High Court of the FCT had an occasion to be angry with the police in his court. The Judge tried to adjourn a trial for 2 days. The police prosecutor asked for one month. The judge got very angry and said to the police: "You people don't know what is happening. Everything has changed. The Chief Judge is breathing down our throats for us to expedite all these cases". He went on to say that pressure was also coming from the Attorney General's office. He further told the police that the accused people had been in prison and that he would not allow him an adjournment of longer than one week. The incident in Justice Kekemeke court occurred the 3rd week of October. That was the week the Chief Judge initially visited Abattoir. He announced he was coming and the police knew exactly when he was coming. So, the police managed to move the inmates out of the cells. As early as 5am, the police moved the inmates out of the cell. When the Chief Judge entered Abattoir, he could not see the inmates that were shown in the Abattoir pictures DPA attached to its petitions. That caused the Chief Judge to ask repeatedly if there were not other inmates. One of the few inmates, the police purposefully left behind told the Chief judge that the inmates were taken away and hidden that morning. The Chief Judge understood. He told them not to worry that he knew what to do. The Chief Judge left with his team. On Monday, 4th November, 2019, the chief Judge came back unannounced with a team of judges and magistrates - more than 10 of them. They arrived around 8:30am and they went straight to the Abattoir cells. They took the police by surprise. This time they saw worse than was shown on the pictures submitted by DPA. They saw hundreds of men emaciated to skeleton out of hunger. They saw people with torture injuries. The stench, the suffering was unbearable. Some of the detainees were too weak to stand on their feet. The judges could not believe what they saw. Tears were seen trickling down the faces of some of the judges. The Chief Judge and his team immediately declared the place a mobile court and started issuing warrants for the detainees to be taken to the prisons where they could at least have food to eat and live. Some who were strong enough to go home were set free, depending on their stories. This is a landmark victory for us, DPA members. But we must not relax yet. We still have a long way to go. When the police made the mistake of detaining Emeka Ugwuonye in Abattoir in July of 2018 for just a weekend, Emeka saw Abattoir and he swore to tell the world about Abattoir. He tried by making a documentary on Abattoir. The police decided to silence him the way they know best. So, they charged him with murder of someone he didn't even know was in existence. Today, we know that the corrupt police behind Abattoir were not able to cover up Abattoir. We demand for justice. We demand for a public hearing. Let the families of those killed in Abattoir come forward and talk about their pains. The victims deserve justice and healing.

Currently, the cost of transporting prison inmates from various correctional facilities to the various courts for trials is borne by the Prison Service (Correctional Service).

Who are the inmates that have to be transported to courts for trial? These are people that the courts failed to admit to bail. They are called the untried inmates or awaiting trial inmates. In the earlier part of our report, we have shown that the courts have been largely reckless, irrational and inefficient in the manner they handle bail hearings, which led to the fact that 80% of prison inmates are awaiting trial cases. The reckless and dysfunctional manner in which judges deal with bail applications has profound cost implications. First, it means that 80% of prison inmates needs to be transported to court at somebody's expense. This requires each correction center to maintain a fleet of vehicles, personnel and security for the movement of inmates to and from courts each day. We do not have precise cost figures. But apart from feeding the inmates, the costs of taking them to court is probably the second highest expenditure category in the recurrent part of the prisons budget. Assuming that the cost per annum of transporting prisoners to court in the FCT Abuja area is 500 million naira, cutting in half the number of awaiting trial inmates will save 250 million naira in Abuja alone. That amount can go toward better and improved conditions of service for prison staff, and better facilities for reforming convicted inmates. Another manner in which the courts impose logistical costs on the prisons is by inordinate delays of trials. It compounds the problem of mishandling of bail applications. That is: the court has remanded a person in prison who ought to have been on bail. And then by failing to try the person in a timely manner, the court prolongs the period of time the person is incarcerated. This compounds the associated costs. We can extrapolate to the wider problems caused by the failings of the judiciary in this regard such as the general cost of keeping inmates in correctional facilities for a long time. However, we limit our analysis here to the cost of transporting inmates to courts for their trial. The question here is: Where do you place the cost of the inefficient behavior of the judiciary? At present, that cost is placed on the prisons. It is always inefficient when costs are not located in the same place as the source of the action or decision that gave rise to the costs. Unless the agency that makes the cost decisions is made to bear the cost, the decisions cannot be efficiently made. If the FCT judiciary is made to bear the 500 million estimated annual cost of transporting inmates from prison to courts, the attitude of the courts toward bail applications will change dramatically. If the cost of transporting inmates to courts were made to compete with the cost of welfare and vacation and medical allowances of judges, the judiciary will immediately reassess its attitude toward bail applications and the length of time it takes a court to conclude a standard case. Currently, some prisons don't have vehicles to take inmates to courts. Keffi prison, for instance, takes inmates to courts only twice a week. The courts are not aware of this. So, on a day the prison is not able to bring an inmate to court, the judge will just adjourn the case to next month. But the date of the next adjournment may be another day the prison will not have a vehicle. This could go on for six months without the prisoner ever being to court. But assuming it is the court that arranges the transportation of the inmate, this sort of waste will likely not occur. DPA therefore suggests changes that will be necessary to make the courts bear the cost of bringing to court the person they could not release on bail. When a person has not been convicted, he belongs to the courts and not to the prisons. It should be the responsibility of the courts to bring the person from prison to court and back until the end of his trial or until the court grants him bail. This is what obtains in some other countries including Britain. This recommendation calls for a redefinition of the relationship between the courts and the prisons. Currently, the prisons are blaming the courts for congestion and costs of transporting inmates to courts, and the courts are blaming the prisons for either not bringing the inmates to courts for trials or for not bringing them on time. This situation will change if the courts bear the cost of its actions and decisions in this regard. This will lead to greater efficiency and improved justice in Nigeria. By the Due Process Advocates Foundation (DPA).

The benefit of being a member of this forum is that it gives you the opportunity to operate above the average person. As an Advocate, you should not think or react like an average person in the society. You may not have trained in Harvard or Oxford, but your exposure to DPA debates and reasoning keeps you very close. Looking at the judgment of the court in the case which Busola Dakolo filed against Pastor Fatoyinbo, you see reactions that show you how deeply ignorant many educated people are. You need to understand that case in a way an informed observer should see it. The court DID NOT decide that the Pastor was not guilty. The guilt or innocence of the Pastor was never before the court. Why? Because it was a civil case. Neither the police nor the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) filed a rape case against the pastor. What happened was that the lady filed a civil action for sexual assault against the pastor. Rape is a criminal offense. Only the police or the MOJ can charge a person to Court for rape.  When the MOJ or the police sue you, it is the country that is suing you. They use the awesome resources of the country to pursue you - investigate the case, bring together witnesses and prosecute you. This case was brought by the lady herself, as a civil action. In civil suits, you must file your case within 6 years after the incident occurred, except under special circumstances when you may be allowed to bring an action after 6 years had elapsed. Busola's case was actually in two stages. The first stage was to see if she could be allowed to bring her action after 6 years under one of the exceptions to the rule. The second stage would be whether the man did what he was accused of doing. The case did not get to that second stage. The judge held that the suit was statute barred (That is, she did not come to court early enough. So her case cannot be heard). That was what the court decided. It is wrong to assume that the court decided the second stage of the case - whether he did it or not. Criminal cases generally do not have statutes of limitation. If the MOJ had decided to prosecute the pastor, the case would have gone straight to the second stage (evaluation on the merit) and the court would address the issue of guilt or innocence. Let me illustrate how the statute of limitation works. Let us say that I am a man and you are a lady. Let us say that I come to your house now and find you alone at home. Let us say I pull a knife on you and rape you violently and I threaten to kill you if you tell anyone what happened. Let us say that you did not sue me until 2025 (The incident occurred on November 14, 2019 and you decide to sue me on November 15, 2025). I can actually come to court and say: "My Lord, everything she said is true. But that was more than 6 years ago and your court has no jurisdiction to hear a case that is statute barred". The judge will look at me and hate me. But he will still dismiss your case, not because I did not do it, but you waited too long to go to court. You should have sued me two days ago instead of today. So, even if the COZA Pastor had confessed that he did it, the judgment will still be the same. So it is not correct to read what happened in court to mean that the court found that he didn't do it.

(1) Feeding (a) Prison food is rated 3 on a scale of 10 for standard meal. But prison allows for self-feeding for inmates that want to buy and cook their own meal or have someone prepare their meal and deliver it. So, an inmate that can afford it can eat whatever he wants, as often as he wants and as much as he wants. It will be prepared to his taste. (b) DSS food is rated 7 on a scale of 10 for standard meal. However, DSS does not allow its inmates to be on self feeding or to buy food or to have someone deliver food to them, except on very rare occasions. You are restricted to their ration and their feeding schedule. (2) Water (a) Prison inmates drink from the boreholes within the prison which supply water to the prison. But sachet water, bottled water, all manner of nonalcoholic beverages are available for inmates who can afford them. (b) DSS detainees have only the water supplied by their borehole. They do not allow any other sources of water or beverages to get to inmates. (3) Regulation visit (a) Prison inmates are entitled to visits under various laws (local and international laws). Except in well-established situations, the prison officials are forbidden from monitoring conversations between an inmate and his visitors. If the visitor is his lawyer, prison authorities are strictly forbidden from listening into their conversation. It is up to the prisoner to determine who can visit him or not within the visiting period. (b) There is really nothing like regulation visit for DSS detainees. It is up to DSS officers what they can allow and what they cannot allow. Usually they allow one of your lawyers and one of your relatives (your wife) to be those that can visit you. You're generally not entitled to visits. They listen into every discussion between you and your allowed visitor. They insist that discussion between you and even your wife should be in English. (4) Access to newspapers, books, television: (a) Kuje prison, like most prisons in Nigeria, has a library. Every cell has TV with DSTV or Go-TV (inmates contribute money for subscription). Apart from library books, prison inmates can read books and can bring in their own books, provided each such book is cleared through the welfare department. Inmates can watch video games and have their mp3, and other music players. (b) In DSS cell, there is no tv, no newspaper, no book except religious books (Bible and Quran) and no library. (5) Community life (a) Prison inmates are opened out up to 9 hours each day. Once out of their cells, they are free to mingle with other inmates, play games and sports with them, worship or fellowship with them. (b) DSS inmates are restricted to their cells 24/7 unless there is a reason to bring you out briefly when they want to interrogate you. Once that is done, you are back to your cell. Your only community is your cell mates (about 35 in a cell). There is absolutely no sporting facilities. (6) Conditions of incarceration: (a) International law does not allow prisoners to be detained in underground cells. They must have ventilation. (Nigeria is far below the international standards, but there are no underground cells in Nigerian prisons) (b) DSS has underground cells known as Alpha Cells. Sowore and his codefendant are in one of such cells. In those cells inmates cannot see the natural light from their cells. DSS cells are designed to inflict psychological torture on the detainee. (7) Purpose of detention (a) Prison authorities detain you for correctional purposes or to make you available for your trial. So, many things in the prison are designed to reform the inmate. For this reason, you have educational institutions such as the Open University and others within the prison, various religious groups minister with the inmates. You have sports, parties, etc. (b) DSS detain you in order to investigate you and to pressure you to cooperate. It is thus a hostile place for torture and pressure and surveillance. There is CCTV camera in every cell, just like the Big Brother, without the fun side. There are so many other areas of comparison to show that being remanded in prison is several times better than being remanded in DSS or any police cell. It was unwise for Sowore to choose to be detained in DSS cell. He has been totally isolated from society. He has not read newspapers or seen a tv screen since his detention. His only source of access to the outside world was if he meets his lawyers in court or his relative (the relative that was allowed), and they tell him what is happening outside. In rare occasions, a DSS detainee develops a rapport with DSS officers handling him. In such case, they use their discretion to allow such inmate to come out of his cell more often to sit and gist with them. An example was Nnamdi Kanu. After a while in their custody, many DSS officers liked to chat with Nnamdi. They liked to listen to Nnamdi’s ideas, etc. So, they allowed him time outside the cell. But Sowore has not developed such rapport with the officers. Besides, he lacks Nnamdi's charisma and intellect. Also, the DSS officers were annoyed when Sowore started yelling "RevolutionNow" in court the first time he appeared in court. DSS read a different kind of meaning into it. Obviously Sowore wanted to imitate Nnamdi Kanu. But the outcome was totally different. First, whereas Nnamdi Kanu did his own right in the presence of the Judge like calling President Buhari a mad man right in the presence of the judge, Sowore always waited for the judge to leave the court before staging his own drama. So, everybody saw Nnamdi as genuinely fearless, while they saw that of Sowore as calculated opportunism to create impression of courage. Because Nnamdi exploded in the presence of the judge, DSS looked to the judge for how to respond to Nnamdi, and the judge only cautioned Nnamdi. However, because Sowore did his own after the judge left, it was up to DSS to control the situation and they swiftly subdued him physically there and then. Nnamdi was seen as daring the judge and the state, which was an act of courage, but Sowore was seen as insulting the DSS officers and they took it personal. Also, it was unwise for Sowore to try to imitate Nnamdi Kanu. Each time Nnamdi was in court, there were at least 3,000 supporters in the court premises chanting in support of Biafra. That worried the authorities. So, Nnamdi's court appearance was a major security event. But despite the efforts of Sowore's friends, not up to 20 people come to court as his supporters. Nnamdi had the elements of a revolution, while Sowore lacked every bit of it. Today, we shall know exactly what the DSS is up to on Sowore. If they release him today, then they only wanted to mess with him and his lawyer as a psychological message. If not, they will have to come up with a plan. As Rambo suggested earlier, it is possible that DSS is planning to keep Sowore in detention for as long as Buhari is in office. When Femi Falana begins to say there is a 3rd term, and he is representing a man that calls for "revolution now", these people read more meaning into the relationship between Falana and his client. We shall know more by the end of today.

Contempt for the rights of a citizen! Contempt for Falana, a senior lawyer in Nigeria with very loud voice. And contempt for the court. That's exactly what it is. The DSS says to all: "There is nothing you can do. We are the law unto ourselves". The consequences of the behavior of DSS are far reaching. It sends a message to all Nigerians, that we are not a country of law, that instead, we are a jungle state. It means there is no rule of law. It erodes confidence in the country, by confirming that the country is a zoo for sure. It undermines the independence of the judiciary. It sends a message to the judges, that they are powerless, that the constitution is useless, that  they do not control outcomes when it comes to justice. Judges don't like to give orders that will not be obeyed. The effect of the behavior of DSS is that judges will stop granting bail because they feel it is safer not to make an order that will not be obeyed. Very sad indeed for the country. One wonders if the President understands how this sort of thing tarnishes his legacy as a leader