The Chief Joe-Kyari Gadzama, SAN led Nigerian Bar Association Security Agencies Relations Committee (NBA-SARC) has condemned the action of customs officers who manhandled a lawyer while appearing for his client at the Service’s Headquarters in Abuja recently.
The lawyer, who was being rough handled and threatened to be locked up by the customs officials in uniform in a video which went viral on Tuesday, 22nd February, 2022, was seeing challenging the act of the officers.
The development has since elicited reactions from a cross-section of the public with lawyers particularly frowning at unending cases of intimidation and abuse by security agencies against lawyers in the course of their professional duties.
In a statement by the Chairman of the Committee, Gadzama described the video as unpleasant and establishing a prima facie case of intimidation and harassment by the NCS officials against the lawyer.
“The Nigerian Bar Association – Security Agencies Relations Committee (NBA-SARC) has taken urgent cognizance of the unpleasant video presently making the rounds on social media wherein uniformed officers of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) were seen violently manhandling, harassing, and physically intimidating a Legal Practitioner who, supposedly in the course of the discharge of professional duties, had accompanied a client to the NCS, for resolution of a dispute on the impounded car of his client.
äQuite sadly, the NBA-SARC has, prima facie, observed from the referenced viral video that the said Legal Practitioner in the course of discharging his regular professional duties, was seen being manhandled by several uniformed NCS officers and forcefully detained on the instructions of an officer of the NCS.”
The statement further condemned the act in strong terms describing it as adverse to all known ethics of the Service.
Gadzama noted; “The NBA–SARC strongly condemns such wanton display of brute force, physical harassment, and intimidation as seen exhibited against the Legal Practitioner in the viral video by some officers of the NCS. Indeed, this ugly incidence goes against every known ethical and operational standard of the NCS, which is one of the elite security agencies with pivotal security mandates.”
In a related development, the NBA-SARC has written to the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hameed Ibrahim Alli (rtd.), over the viral video of officers of the Service manhandling a lawyer.
In the letter, dated, Wednesday, February 23,2022, the Committee slated a meeting with the Customs hierarchy on the 8th of March, 2022 for deliberation on issues of shared concern and sundry matters.
The letter also expressed great displeasure in the incident which involved officers of the service manhandling a lawyer in the video which has since gone viral and demanded for explanations and appropriate sanctions against erring officers.
