Adjoto: Speaker, Edo State House of Assembly.

The immediate past Speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly, Alhaji Kabiru Adjoto, has approached the Edo State High Court in Benin, to seek a restraining order to prevent his `imminent’ arrest.

According to court documents, seen by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Benin on Friday, Adjoto is seeking protection of court to enforce his fundamental human rights and also prevent his “imminent arrest by some security agencies’’.

The document named the agencies as the inspector-general of police, director-general of the Directorate of State Security Services and the commandant-general of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).

Others are the commissioner of police in Edo, director of the DSS in Edo, commandant of the NSCDC in Edo and the chairman of the APC party in Edo.

Adjoto filed his application, suit no 13/126m/2020 entitled: “Notice of Application for Order Enforcing Fundamental Right (Order 2, Rule 1)’’ at the Benin High Court in the Edo State Judicial Division.

The former speaker is seeking among other things: for the court to declare that the respondents planned, contemplated and or intended to arrest and detain him.

According to him, the respondents have articulated trumped-up allegations to keep him away from the forth coming governorship election in Edo.

The former speaker described the purported plan to arrest him as unlawful, illegal and amounting to flagrant infraction on his fundamental human rights as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution.

He is also seeking an order of perpetual injunction “restraining the respondents, their agents, privies, servants, thugs of any name, whatsoever from arresting, detaining or kidnapping him upon any trumped-up allegation.

The grounds for the application, according to Adjoto is that he received a classified information from his sources in Abuja to the effect that the 7th respondent had shortlisted five prominent members of the PDP in Edo, to be arrested and detained.

He alleged that the PDP chieftains to be arrested would be held in detention until the conclusion of the Edo governorship election.

Adjoto deposed to a 25-paragraph affidavit to support his application.

Edo State is billed for governorship polls on Sept. 19, in a high-stakes election, described by analysts as likely to be settled with blows, betrayals and bloodshed. (NAN)