Follow Us on Google
By Abubakar Yakubu
All over the world, Mother’s Day is celebrated to honour mothers and mother figures and acknowledge their influence in the society. But this year’s Mother’s Day that fell on March 10 saw the family of Elder Cletus Dike in a sorrowful mood while a majority of families were celebrating the day in Awka, Anambra State.
His wife, Prisca Dike, a mother of eight, has been locked away for the past two years in the detention facility of the Department of State Services (DSS) in Abuja.
The woman was arrested by DSS operatives at 2 a.m. in their home at Awka on April 14, 2022, and later transferred to the DSS headquarters in Abuja on the seventh day of her arrest.
Her husband, a church elder, said the family was not told of her offence and had made all efforts to see her in detention but the DSS has denied them or their lawyer access to her. He said the family had decided to leave the matter in the hands of God and resorted to prayers so that his wife could be freed from the matter.
The family prayers appear to have worked as some released detainees from the DSS facility approached the law firm of Nnaemeka Ejiofor and Associates to inform them of the plight of an ailing woman who had a fractured hip in the DSS cell.
One of the law firm’s associates, Basilia A. Emejulu, said the ailing woman who turned out to be Prisca, had suffered a hip dislocation before her arrest and the family was looking for money so that she could undergo surgery in a hospital.
She said immediately the law firm got wind of the ailing woman’s detention, they wrote a letter to the DSS headquarters on March 12, 2024, and served it on them on March 14, requesting to see the woman and stating her fundamental rights as enshrined under Section 36 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“The letter listed her rights which were violated by denying her access to a legal practitioner and her family members all this while and we highlighted Section 36 for them to note and also highlighted that she has been in detention for two years without a valid court order,” the lawyer said.
Emejulu said the DSS honoured the letter and they were allowed to see Prisca on May 29, 2024. She said when they met the woman; she was on crutches and appeared frail.
“The woman narrated how she was arrested by the DSS at 2 am on April 14, 2022, at her home while in serious pain and how the doctors in the detention facility only treated her for malaria or other minor diseases instead of taking her to an orthopaedic hospital to undergo surgery on the hip,” she said.
The lawyer said that during their discussion, the woman at intervals was groaning as a result of the pain she was experiencing, adding that there was a need for the DSS to immediately take her to an orthopaedic hospital to perform the surgery to relieve her of such pain.
According to the lawyer, while having an audience with the woman, the DSS then served them with the court processes they had filed against the woman on May 6, stating that she is an alleged member of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB)/ Eastern Security Network (ESN) and committed an offence under Section 25 of the Terrorism Act of 2022.
She said other charges in the court process were that Prisca provided explosives materials called dynamites to IPOB/ESN members and also had information that she refused to reveal on the activities of the organisation.
The DSS also accused her of receiving some specific amount of money from a member of the group to finance the group’s activities as well as concealing some information that would be of material benefit to prevent the committing of dangerous acts by the group.
Emejulu noted that if the law firm hadn’t written to the DSS, maybe Prisca would have been kept in perpetual detention without charges filed in court against her.
“Before our letter, no charges were filed by the DSS and she was just kept in detention for two years and it is obvious that she was kept there without a valid court order. We have informed the DSS of the breach of her constitutional rights,” she added.
The lawyer appealed to the DSS to urgently take the detainee to an orthopaedic hospital so that she could undergo the hip corrective surgery to relieve her of the excruciating pains she is facing.
She said the law firm will apply for Prisca’s bail as soon as the trial begins so that she can first go to the hospital for proper treatment.
Also commenting on his wife’s plight, Elder Cletus appealed that she be taken to a hospital urgently for the surgery. He said the family had been saving money to take her to the hospital before her arrest.
