Last Thursday, a Sabo-Yaba Chief Magistrates’ Court, Lagos presided over by Adeola Olatubosun granted an application by the police for an extension of remand of Afrobeat singer Seun Kuti for additional four days. That is, till May 22.
He was charged with assaulting a police officer on May 13 on the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos.
As contained in the attached documents, Simon Lough (SAN), who led a police legal team to the court, had moved the application. According to him, “the extension is to allow further investigation into the case.” The court paper has it further: “We could not conclude investigation in 2 days, we now ask for extra 4 days to enable us to conclude the investigation.”
However, a source told TheNEWS that Seun Kuti refused that his blood sample be taken for medical examination. Worse still, the source added: “The Police are trying to take the Afrobeat musician to the Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Aro, Abeokuta, Ogun State to declare him mentally sick. You can imagine what that can cause his musical career in Nigeria and abroad.”
A closer examination of the document presented to take Seun’s blood sample shows that the court “further orders the applicant to get a medical doctor to examine the Respondent as provided in section 5(6) Administration of Criminal Justice Law, 2015. Adjourned to 23/05/for DPP’s advice.”
However, there is nowhere in the court proceedings (the exchanges between prosecution and defense lawyers) that a medical examination was mentioned! Analysts see the discrepancy between what was said in court (the roll order) and the document later presented as curious. Ideally, the two documents must be in sync with each other.
On Tuesday, 16 May, Kuti was arraigned during which the chief magistrate ordered his remand for 48 hours. As NAN reported it, she, however, held that the defendant should be admitted to bail in the sum of one million Naira with two sureties in like sum, at the end of the 48-hour remand.
She said that one of the sureties must be a landlord within the jurisdiction of the court.
She adjourned the case until 22 May for mention and directed the prosecutor to duplicate the case file and forward a copy to the state director of public prosecutions for advice.
See the documents below:
