On Friday, the Federal High Court in Abuja issued a “notice of consequences” against Adeola Oluwatosin Ajayi, the Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), for contempt of court.
The court in the notice dated October 18, 2024 and signed by its registrar, threatened that the DSS boss would be committed to prison if he continued to disobey court orders by denying the detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu access to his lawyers.
The Notice read, “TAKE NOTICE that unless you obey the directions contained in this Order (see overleaf) – by allowing the Applicant’s Counsel to conduct the Court-ordered visitations with the Applicant on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays – you will be guilty of Contempt of Court and will be liable to be committed to prison.”
Confirming the development, Kanu’s Special Counsel, Barrister Aloy Ejimakor, said that the notice by the court was necessitated by the DSS’s repeated disobedience of the court-ordered three days in a week visitation of Kanu by his lawyers.
Ejimakor said that with the court’s notice, if the DSS Director, Ajayi continues to deny them access to Kanu, the IPOB leader’s legal team will be left with no option but to commence vigorous contempt proceedings against him.
Ejimakor said, “This Notice is necessitated by the repeated disobedience of the court-ordered visitation of Mazi Kanu by the newly appointed Director-General of the State Security Services (Mr. Adeola Oluwatosin Ajayi) who has, for almost a month, not allowed Mazi Kanu’s Lawyers to visit him.
“To be clear, this Notice is a quasi-criminal judicial process that forewarns any person disobeying a court order of the penal consequences of such misconduct.
“Therefore, if the Director-General of DSS persists on this ignoble path, he will leave us with no other option than to commence vigorous contempt proceedings against him.”
Recall that Justice Binta Nyako had in a judgment delivered on May 20, 2024, issued an order varying the condition of visitation to Kanu in the DSS custody to three days a week.
The court ordered that, “He is to be given a safe and “clean” room to be made available to the Defendant at the present facility to prepare for his defence with his team of counsel not exceeding 5 in number.
“That they should be allowed such facility that is required for the preparation of his defence and be allowed to take notes.”
However, Kanu’s legal team has on several occasions raised an alarm that the DSS moved from secretly recording their conversations with Kanu to completely denying them access to Kanu, hence, making it impossible for them to prepare Kanu for his defence.
