According to a report by Punch Metro, legal practitioners in Ekiti State on Monday protested against the kidnap and killing of their members, calling on security agencies to step up security of lives and property.
The lawyers, under the aegis of the Nigeria Bar Association, Ado Ekiti, Ikole Ekiti and Ikere Ekiti branches, embarked on the protest following the recovery of the decomposing corpse of the Secretary General of the Ikole Branch, Adeola Adebayo, who was kidnapped on November 17 around Erio Ekiti on his way from Ibadan to Ado Ekiti.
The placard-carrying lawyers said despite paying the N4m ransom demanded by Adebayo’s abductors, he was still killed.
Thirty-three-year-old Adebayo and eight others, including members of his family, were kidnapped by the gunmen, but the abductors released the others, leaving only the lawyer, whom they placed a N100m ransom on with the condition that he would be killed if protests against his kidnap did not stop.
The lawyers also protested against the killing of another member, Mr Adesina Okeya, by unknown gunmen, who abducted him in Abuja few days after he was called to the Bar. His corpse was later found.
In a petition addressed to the Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, copies of which were submitted to the state Commissioner of Police, Mr Bello Ahmed; and Director, Department of State Services, Mrs Precious Ihenacho, the lawyers condemned the alleged lackadaisical attitude of security agencies to the rising wave of kidnapping in the state.
In the petition entitled: ‘One death, too many’, which was signed by the NBA chairmen, Olakanmi Falade (Ado Ekiti), Ibrahim Olanrewaju (Ikole Ekiti) and Oludayo Olorunfemi (Ikere Ekiti), the lawyers said, “The purpose of the government is to provide security for lives and property, and where this is not done, the said government is said to have failed the electorate and the constitution it swore to protect.
“The state government is not too oblivious to the activities of these deadly killers between Iwaraja and Aramoko areas, but it saddens us that there is an ongoing criminal silence and failure to act despite the sustained kidnapping and killings around the axis.
“We demand immediate deployment of troops to comb that area and arrest and bring to justice those who perpetrated this killing and kidnap, as well as rid our land of this marauding killers and harbingers of death.”
The Deputy Governor, Chief Bisi Egbeyemi, who received the petition on Fayemi’s behalf, stated that the state government had urged the police and other security agencies to find the NBA scribe’s killers.
Egbeyemi, who said he was personally pained by the gruesome killings of the two lawyers and citizens of the state, gave an assurance that measures had already been put in place to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The Commissioner of Police, who spoke while receiving the petition, said the police made efforts to rescue eight out of those kidnapped alongside Adebayo.
According to him, the warning given by the deceased’s family that they should tread softly on the matter made the police to soft-pedal on the rescue efforts.
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