Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) To File Petition Against Akwa Ibom Judge

The Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Akwa Ibom State Council,
said it is going to file a petition against Margaret Ekpedoho, a
magistrate in Akwa Ibom sanitation court who threw a journalist
into jail under controversial circumstances, PremiumTimesng reports.^[1]

Mary Ekere, a female journalist who reports for a local
newspaper in Uyo, was arrested by the state environmental task
force on September 16 for taking photos of the task force officials
raiding a shop.

She was thrown into the Uyo prison that same day without
appearing before a judge, an incident lawyers who spoke with
PREMIUM TIMES said was “strange” in the nation’s justice
system.

Section 36 of the Nigerian Constitution guarantees citizens’
right to “fair hearing in public” in any criminal matter.

The journalist said she was beaten up and thrown inside a
vehicle, alongside a young man who was also arrested by the task
force officials.

“They drove off to the Environmental Court. By the time we got
to the Environmental Court, the magistrate had left. This was
around 4:00 p.m.

“They took me to their office. We spent a few minutes there and
then drove again to the court to check if the magistrate had
returned because they had put a call through to her.

“Upon getting there, the magistrate was not still there, so they
had to drive out again. This time, straight to the prison and
[they] dumped both of us there,” Ms Ekere said in a report
published recently by the human rights organisation, Amnesty
International.

The Amnesty report, titled ‘Endangered Voices: Attack on Freedom
of Expression in Nigeria’, chronicles the attacks on the press in
Nigeria since 2015.

Ms Ekere, on the invitation of Amnesty International, flew from
Uyo to Abuja to take part in the launch of the report.

Apart from the “strange” circumstances in which she was thrown
into jail, Ms Ekere was also forced by the magistrate to delete the
photos of the task force officials she took with her mobile
phone.

Ms Ekere’s travails featured prominently during the NUJ congress
in the state on Friday.

“The Congress condemned in no uncertain terms the action of
Margaret Ekpedoho, a Magistrate sitting at the Sanitation Court,
Uyo, who struck out the suit against Comrade Mary Ekere, after the
Akwa Ibom State Government withdrew the charges against the
journalist, but asked that the case file be brought back to her and
ordered Ekere to delete from her mobile phone, the pictures of
officials of Akwa Ibom State Environmental Protection and Waste
Management Agency, raiding a shop and manhandling traders in Uyo,”
the journalists’ union said in a communiqué.

“Congress resolved to petition the Chief Judge of Akwa Ibom
State, Justice Godwin Abraham over the conduct of the Magistrate,”
the communiqué added.

Before Mrs Ekpedoho struck out the charges of assault and
obstruction of duties against Ms Ekere, she lashed out at the
journalist and questioned her rights to take photos of state
officials carrying out “enforcement”.

“If we allow this to go on, it means someday a husband and his
wife could be making love inside their bedroom, and a journalist
would go in to film them,” she said.

She also commented on the outrage that followed Ms Ekere’s
detention in the prison, saying she gave a satisfactory explanation
on the matter when she was summoned by the state chief judge.

“I have read all kinds of reports on social media about this
case, let me tell you I am not intimidated.

“I was in my house drinking juice, and reading what you people
were writing on Facebook. Journalists, I hope you people are there?
Go and report it, fire on!” the magistrate said inside the
courtroom.

A human rights group, the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO),
Akwa Ibom State, had accused the magistrate, Mrs Ekpedoho, of
giving an order via a telephone call for Ms Ekere to be thrown into
jail, even when the journalist was not arraigned.

Mrs Ekpedoho, apparently reacting to the CLO’s claim, said the
task force sometimes raid places in the night, and that she could
come back at any time to sign a remand order. “I can sign a remand
order at any time of the day, even if it is in the night,” she said
in the courtroom.

PREMIUM TIMES sought the opinion of several lawyers on the
possibility of having a Nigerian citizen thrown into jail without
arraignment in court.

“That is very odd,” Attah Ochinke, a lawyer in Calabar, Cross
River State, told PREMIUM TIMES. “The prison can only accept you on
the order of the court.”

Mr Ochinke, a former attorney general of Cross River State, said
such could only happen if “they were able to get a magistrate to
sign a detention warrant without sitting”. But he said that too
would be “indeed odd”.

Another lawyer, Chike Okoye, said Ms Ekere’s story is “most
irregular”.

“Prison is a receptacle for persons who have been denied bail or
persons who have been convicted or persons whose bail could not be
perfected. There is no how you can send someone to prison custody
without having arraigned that person. In fact, being in prison
shows that there is a commencement of a criminal trial. And
criminal trial commences from arraignment,” Mr Okoye said.

Publicity of trial is a constitutional right of every Nigerian
citizen, said a Lagos-based human rights lawyer, Inibehe
Effiong.

“You cannot hold trial or proceedings in private except under
special circumstances…. Even if it is an ex-parte application, this
application has to be moved in court.

“If it is actually true that a magistrate gave an order for
someone to be remanded without the person being formally arraigned
in court and the person being afforded an opportunity to take a
plea, that is a serious infraction, that would be serious
misconduct,” Mr Effiong said.

Richard Akinola, a journalist, told PREMIUM TIMES that the
“mystery” around Ms Ekere’s story deserves some investigation.

“Perhaps, Uyo NBA may need to step in at this point to
investigate what actually transpired because it is a very strange
development,” Mr Akinnola said.

The task force that arrested the journalist has been suspended
by the Akwa Ibom government.