Following their petition to the House of Representatives to facilitate their release, reprieve might be on the way for the six professors in Nigerian universities and four others arrested, deported and imprisoned in Cameroon since January 2018.
The lawyer to six Cameroonian professors teaching in
Nigerian universities and four others, Barr Joseph Fru, on Tuesday said his
clients were illegally imprisoned by the Cameroonian authorities.
The family members of the detained professors had petitioned
the House of Representatives to help secure their release after being allegedly
abducted from Nigeria and imprisoned in Cameroon since January 2018.
The petitioners, all of Cameroonian nationality, of which
the others include refugees and asylum seekers, said they were all legally
resident in Nigeria.
They stated that they were illegally abducted and deported
from Nigeria on January 5th 2018 to Cameroon, on “frivolous allegations of
plotting to destabilize the government of La Republique du Cameroon (LRC)
President Mr. Paul Biya.”
They petitioned that they were unfairly tried and
incarcerated.
In their petition submitted to the House Committee on Public
Petitions by their lawyers, they said two separate judgments in Nigeria had
been ruled in their favour connection with the matter.
They stated that despite the judgement by Nigerian courts
that their arrest and deportation were illegal hence they should be released
and compensated financially, they were still being held at the Kondengui
Security Detention facility in Cameroon.
They also added that in October 2022, the UN Human Rights
Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UN-HRC-WGAD) in Communication
59/2022 of 14th October 2022, found their arrest and detention by Nigeria and
Cameroun arbitrary and illegal and it had asked both countries to
unconditionally free the victims and pay them appropriate compensation.
At the penultimate hearing of the matter before the House
Committee on Public Petitions a representative of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Mohammed Manu, had said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no record
if this petition.
He had said their findings revealed the matter was handled
by the government as a security and legal matter.
Briefing reporters after another hearing on the matter on
Tuesday, Fru said said they were optimistic by the intervention of the
legislature in resolving the matter.
Fru, who was in the company of family members of those
affected, said however rued that the representative of the United Nations and
relevant agencies of the Nigerian government were missing at the hearing.
He said those who failed to turn up included the Attorney
General of the Federation, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, UN
High Commission Country Representative, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the
National Intelligence Agency and the Department of State Services (DSS)
He said, “There is a clarification that we need to make that
is fundamental and cardinal. They were abducted. They were not arrested. When
you say someone is arrested, there is a legal course for them to be picked up
by the forces of law and order. And in a normal arrest situation, you have
probable cause that you are being suspected of committing a crime and before
you get to that point, there has to be a procedure you follow to get either an
arrest warrant or search warrant that may lead to their apprehension.
“But when someone arbitrarily without any legal course is
picked up and then held for as long as they were held in Nigeria before being
sent to Cameron that is called an abduction.
“An abduction does not end when we know where they are. That
illegal act continues and abides with them until that illegality is cured. And
to this point that illegality has not been cured and that is why we are still
in prison.
“The second thing is that they were not repatriated. You
repatriate someone when you go through a legal channel and you exhaust all the
legal processes and the court decides that they go back to where they came from
to answer in that jurisdiction. Before you repatriate someone there has to be
bilateral treaty that is observed. None of that in this case.
“We adjourned for 11 June 2024 because the committee is not
happy with the fact that the last time they were elements of the government of
the executive arm that were required to be at the hearing but none of them
showed up.
“So motions were moved and it was adopted that these
entities should necessarily appear in the next hearing so that resolution to
this can be taken. In the event they do not show up, the committee is ready to
move forward. How they move forward depends on their deliberation and that is
above my pay grade.
“The Chairman said they were going to give these entities a
last chance to appear so they can have enough information to go by and come up
with a resolution.”