The Nigeria Prisons Service yesterday explained that the decision to handcuff the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh while appearing for his trial at the Federal High Court in Abuja on Tuesday, was at the discretion of the prison officer, who supervised his court appearance.The spokesperson for the service, Francis Enobore, who was responding to reactions that trailed Metuh’s appearance in court wearing handcuffs, said the officer in charge of the escort that took the PDP chieftain to court was at liberty to determine if the inmate should be handcuffed based on security situation, the environment and intelligence report made available to him.
It would be recalled that Metuh, who is standing trial on seven count criminal charges brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, Metuh, was on Friday remanded in Kuje Prison by Justice Okon Abang.
On the resumed hearing for his bail application, the PDP chieftain was transported by prison officials to court in handcuffs, a development that led the PDP and a cross-section of Nigerians to allege that the move was a ploy by the All Progressives Congress government to muzzle the major opposition party in the country.
Responding to allegations that the NPS was doing the bidding of the Presidency, Enobore stressed that Metuh was not maltreated in any way, explaining that handcuffing an inmate was a standard procedure, which the prison warden could employ based on the situation at hand.
He said, “Handcuffing an inmate is at the discretion of the officer in-charge, depending on the security situation, the environment and intelligence report available to the officer. Sometimes they look at the atmosphere and take the necessary decision.
“If you suspect that the atmosphere, security-wise, may not be conducive to the inmates in your custody, you can use handcuffs; to avoid a situation where you have to start telling stories, you use your discretion to study the environment and take appropriate measures to ensure the safety of the inmates in your custody.
“Remember that we not only try to secure the inmate from escaping, we equally provide protection for the inmate. The officer in-charge must ensure that the life of the inmate is not jeopardised. It is the officer in-charge of the escort that studies the security environment and takes the decision to use handcuffs”. (Informationng)
The problem of bias and preferential judgement by the ‘peoples’ court seems not to consider the prerogatives of statutory powers. It is even more surprising that intellectuals, or so-called elites can not see the ‘wood for the forest’. Chief Metuh would have been risk-assessed by the escorting facility as part of their procedure. In this case, the potential to aggression can be justifiably claimed since Mr. Metuh has presented as volatile when he deliberately tore up his initial written statement to the EFCC. It is common practice to be ‘safe than sorry’. I don’t think any prison official would want such mishap on their watch. However, our level of enlightenment dictates that anything we don’t imbibe MUSY have a ‘logical’ politicised rationale – this should not be the case. The fact that we are still wallowing in mediocrity and in medival thought process is simply because we are yet to take on board that modern penal system or any system at all, must have its procedural ‘pros and cons’ and a systemic assessment of risk: prevention and management. I am of the conviction that the same prison official would have made similar decision of any incarcerated person with Mr. Metuh’s antecedent. We need to move with the trend, regardless of whose ‘ox is gored’.
Sorry Mr Akinade, the assesment you are making now is your own assesment. The prison officers did not state how they arrived at their assesment and i am sure they could have if anything had transpiered. You can not know better than they themselves.Was the Statement you were talking about torn when they were going to court or what else happened?. The issue of Bias does not arise here. Anything done wrongly is Wrong irrespective of who it happens to.
Reading through this, it is just not difficult to confirm the assertion that the most difficult thing in life is lying, because one ends up being consistent in inconsistency.Is it Metuhs safety or that of the officer in charge that hand-cuff here is ensuring.It would have been better face saving that the prison service says who directed them to make the statement here.
This story here is so useless as its annoying. While we agree that he has such discretion, does he exercises it arbitrarily? Its there no particular reason that informed such decision or that informed the prison officer exercising such discretion. The officer should have told us if Metu did something that warranted him been handcuffed to court. Does he remain in handcuffs while in prison or is it only while he is taken to the court. While no one is support of crime of any kind, it become a time bomb waiting to explode if we chose to throw caution to the wind