By Omeiza Ajayi
ABUJA: Detained Director General of the phantom Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council PFIPC, Adeniyi Adeyemi has accused the police of detaining him beyond the scope of the court order used to justify his custody, and has now demanded that the House of Representatives question him at a public sitting rather than the closed-door session the Ad-hoc Committee is reportedly planning.
In a statement issued in Abuja late Tuesday, his lawyer, Prince Ademola Oyedokun, Esq. of Ademolaw Toye Law Firm, said his client welcomed the House inquiry into the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council, insisting that “the National Assembly holds its mandate from the Nigerian people and has the constitutional power to establish the facts of this matter.”
Oyedokun said Adeyemi had never refused to appear before the Committee, noting that his client has remained in police custody without being produced before the Committee or any court.
He said the police told the Committee that Adeyemi Mathew is held pursuant to a court order, but insisted that the order in question, a bench warrant, only authorised his arrest and did not authorise his detention.
“A bench warrant is an order to arrest a man and bring him before the court. It is not an order to detain him.
“The warrant directed the police to arrest our client and to produce him before the Federal High Court. They arrested him. They have not produced him. No order committing him to custody has ever been made, served on him or shown to him, and none could have been made, because he has never been brought before any court”, he said.
The lawyer said an application for his client’s production and release was already before the appropriate court.
He, therefore, asked the Committee to reconsider its plan to interview Adeyemi at an undisclosed date and place, arguing that since the allegations against his client were made in public, his responses should also be heard in public.
Citing Section 89 of the Constitution, which empowers the Committee to summon any person and compel attendance, Oyedokun urged lawmakers to invoke that power and direct the police to produce his client at a public sitting.
He said his client would attend on any date the Committee names, accompanied by counsel, and answer every question put to him.
The lawyer clarified that Adeyemi was not asking the Committee to compromise any investigation. He said his client would answer in public the questions the Committee was constituted to ask, while reserving, on legal advice, any question touching matters already before a court or an agency, which could be taken separately and in private.
“What cannot be right is that the whole of his account be taken behind a closed door because part of it is sensitive,” the statement read.
Oyedokun said he would not argue his client’s case in a press statement, noting that the allegations against Adeyemi are before the Federal High Court and several agencies, where they will be answered on oath.
According to him, the Committee’s inquiry raised a different question, namely how the Council came to exist and who in government acted upon it, a question his client was “anxious to answer” in public.
“We ask only that they remember, meanwhile, that no court has yet heard him say a single word,” the statement read.
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