The consortium of lawyers who have approached the Federal High Court Abuja to commence committal proceedings against the Director General of the Department of State Security for disobedience to the Court order on the continued detention of Mr Godwin Emefiele has accused the DG DSS of threatening to frame them for terrorism and referring to them as IPOB/ESN lawyers.
This position was made known at a press conference addressed on behalf of the lawyers by Mr. Tijani Ahmed following a viral tweet by the DSS on their official Twitter handle in reaction to the processes filed by the consortium.
In the tweet, the DSS was quoted as having written the following, “Charge and bail, overzealous uninformed IPOB/ESN lawyer Maxwell Okpara mobilises other like minded lawyers against DG DSS. Futile Efforts. Well, Nigerians, beware! This is in bad faith. Transferred aggression.
“A Biafran Republic agitator and outlawed IPOB counsel defending the suspended CBN governor. Is IPOB defending one of theirs???? What a contradiction…..hmmm…whats the connection? May Maxwell be properly educated on points of law, please,” the tweet read.
The lawyers claim that the tweet had now gone viral stating, “at about 6AM when we met this morning, the tweet was still there on the handle of the DSS.
This was about 17 hours after it had been posted and had really gone. At that time, it had been seen by about 2 million people globally, generated over 3600 comments, retweeted almost 5000 times and liked more than 2500 times.
The tweets which have been greeted by national outrage and condemnation is still on the handle of the security agency.
Furthermore, the lawyers expressing their trauma following the tweets listed several cases of disobedience to Court order against Mr. Bichi involving Igbo people and asserted that Mr. Bichi must have been suffering from what they termed Igbophobia.
“In the same vein, the tweet by the DSS has also exposed it very clearly to the world that the persecution of Mr. Godwin Emefiele suffers today is largely due to the ethnic profiling as directed by the DG DSS.
The fact that Mr. Emefiele is Igbo and attained the height of CBN Governor to Mr. Bichi is an abomination hence his resolve to see that Emefiele is pulled down because to him, all Igbo are IPOB/ESN Terrorists” the group said.
Mr. Tijani also said it seems clear that Mr. Bichi has declared war on lawyers and Igbo people and that the persecution being suffered by Emefiele is largely due to ethnic and political reasons asserting that it could not be a coincidence that several cases involving Igbo people were being serially disobeyed by the DG DSS.
The lawyers thereafter called for the sack of Mr. Bichi from office for what they termed manifesting open hatred against an ethnic group.
They also alleged that the attitude of the DG DSS would tarnish the image of President Tinubu and thanked the public for the overwhelming public condemnation that trailed the tweet.
Finally the lawyers resolved to write to the UN, EU, UK and US governments, the President, CJN, NSA and also approach the court for the enforcement of their rights.
and then