Three years in Kirikiri prisons: Inmate appeals to Fashola for help

Maria

When Governor Raji Fashola came up with the idea of creating Office of the Public Defender (OPD), under the state’s Ministry of Justice, he had done that with the plan to help those who seek justice, but cannot afford lawyers. The group of lawyers at OPD are supposed to give free legal services.
The Governor’s grand and lofty idea however seemed to have become nebulous and vague, as a family which went to the OPD recently with high hopes that their daughter who had been in kirikiri for three years would be  saved, returned with their hopes dashed.
Brother of the girl, Peter Alobo, 33, said: “Since my younger sister’s incarceration in Kirikiri, several people had urged me to go to OPD. I was told that once I get there, the lawyers would find a way to bring my sister out of the prisons. I was worried that I might have to spend money there again, like I had been spending since the case started, but people told me that nobody at OPD would ask me for any money or bribe.
“I couldn’t believe it. People told me that Fashola, being a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), knows the importance of law and justice, which was why he created the OPD in the first place anyway. I had rushed to OPD with high hope. But I left there deflated. I don’t know what else to do than to appeal to Governor Fashola to urge OPD to look into my sister’s case.”
Maria Alobo Lawrence was just 22-year-old when she was sent to Kirikiri prisons and was on the verge of writing JAMB in preparatory for admission into any of the tertiary universities in Nigeria.
But today, she is 25, holed up together with inmates who committed felonious and heinous crimes.
Peter said he decided to go to OPD after repeated adjournment of the case in court.
His words: “ It dawned on me that if we don’t do something fast to get her out of the prisons, she might end up spending years there, what with the incessant adjournments which I had witnessed since the case started.”
Maria’s journey to Kirikiri prisons, started three years ago after she fell into the hands of professional fraudsters, otherwise known as 419.
According to Peter, Maria was working as a secretary to a female barrister, who had her office at 1004, Victoria Island, Lagos State. Part of her job’s description was to carry out banking transactions on behalf of her boss.
One day, Maria was sent by her boss to a microfinance bank to collect a teller, but when she got there, the money which the bank was supposed to have transferred via e-banking to her boss, was given to Maria, to hand over to her boss.
The money was N960, 000.
Just few minutes after she stepped out of the banking hall, Maria fell into the hands of fraudsters, who brain washed her into believing that they could double the money.
They even convinced her to get into their vehicle, drove her around town, then dropped her at a place where they told her to cross an expressway and buy some native eggs. They told her that the native eggs were part of the items needed to double the money.
As soon as she crossed the road, the men disappeared with her phone, handbag and boss’s money. She raised alarm and cried like her heart would break, but all the sympathisers who gathered around her, could not tell the direction the men had driven off to.
Meanwhile, her boss, tired of waiting for her, had called her family members.
Peter recalled: “After waiting for Maria to return, to no avail, her madam called me.  We tried her phone, but the line was not going. I was arrested and taken to Bar Beach Police Station. I was not just her elder brother; I also signed her guarantor’s form. I was later released on bail. A friend came to bail me.
“I was on my way home, when another of my sister called me that Maria was home. When I got home, she was crying bitterly. She said she didn’t know where they had dropped her. They had driven her to different places. She had to trek and started looking for a way to come home.
“The following day, I took her to Bar Beach Police Station as a sign of good faith. She was detained there for four weeks, before she was granted bail.
“We promised her boss that the money would be paid on instamental bases, which she agreed with. We wrote an undertaken. It was due to that agreement that the police granted Maria bail. They asked her to be reporting to the police station every two days.
“It was on one of the days that she reported that police rearrested her. The woman had changed her mind about the agreement. She asked the police to transfer the case to the State Criminal Investigations Department (SCID), Panti, Yaba, Lagos State. Maria was detained there for three months. She told me that she was tortured because police were investigating the matter. But the Investigating Police Officer (IPO), later said his investigation revealed that the case was pure 419 one.”
When her boss learnt of the findings of the police, she demanded that the case be transferred to court. The case was charged to court on November 2011.
The case was first taken to Ebute-Metta Magistrates Court, court 13, but the Magistrate, who was presiding over the matter, was transferred to Igbosere Magistrates Court, Lagos Island. The transfer of the Magistrate also saw the transfer of the case to Igbosere.
Initially at the Ebute-Metta Courts, Maria had been granted bail with one surety and a bail bond to the tune of N150.
According to Peter, he had presented himself as the surety, but after interviewing him, the court had promised to get back to him, but did not. Subsequently, he had gotten four other to be sureties but those too did not work out well with the court’s requirements.
Maria was remanded in Kirikiri prisons and had spent three years as an inmate there.
Even though the case had come up several times in court, it had always been adjourned. Peter became worried that Maria might spent the rest of her life inside the prisons, if death did not claim her.
Not sure what next to do, Peter had listened to suggestions from people and rushed to OPD, expecting miracle.
Recalling his visits to OPD, he said: “I went to the OPD branch at Barracks bus stop. I wanted them to take up Maria’s case. They asked me to go and get the court’s proceedings. I went to the Police Prosecutor at Ebute-metta for the documents, but the man asked me to give him N10, 000 for photocopy of the documents. I went back to complain to OPD and they said I should know how to follow up with prosecutors and get the documents.
“I reminded them that it was because I was tired of spending money, which I didn’t have, that I came to them. That was how the matter died.  I even tried begging Maria’s madam to reconsider about the case, but she yelled at me, shouting that I came to use juju on her. I left and since then I had not gone back there.
“All I’m begging now is for Governor Fashola to assist us by urging OPD to look into the case of Maria. If Maria’s boss had agreed to that instalment payment, we would probably have finished paying the N960, 000 by now. Three years is a long time for a young girl to be in Kirikiri prisons. Since her incarceration, my mother had not been the same. Maria’s life is wasting away!”