Omoyele Sowore, convener of Revolution Now Movement, and his co- detainee, Adebayo Bakare, on Tuesday, December 3, described the federal government’ s application for their transfer from the custody of the Department of State Service (DSS) to prison as frivolous.
Sowore and Bakare are being prosecuted before the court by the government on charges of treasonable felony instituted against them in the wake of their call for #RevolutionNow protests across the country to demand better governance.
They have been in the custody of DSS since August after they were arrested, despite the court orders, directing their release from the custody on meeting the bail conditions imposed on them after their arraignment.
The duo explained that the fresh application filed by the government before Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu of the Federal High Court in Abuja was meant to frustrate the court’s order for their release from the service custody.
They also described the application filed on behalf of the government by the prosecuting counsel, Hassan Liman (SAN) , as contemptuous for being a contravention of the order directing the DSS to release them from its custody.
That was contained in their notice of preliminary objection filed before the court to challenge the Federal Government ’s fresh application. They argued, through their legal team led by Femi Falana (SAN), that the application for their transfer from the DSS custody to prison, showed that there was no genuine interest to prosecute them.
The application read: “The application was filed by the Complainant/ Applicant to frustrate the execution of the order of release of the 1st and 2nd defendants /objectors from the custody of the State Security Service made by this Honorable Court on November 6, 2019.
“There is no genuine intention to prosecute the 1st and 2nd defendants by the complainant /applicant as the statement of witnesses this Honorable Court ordered to be availed the defence team is yet to be issued and served. The grounds upon which the complainant’s / applicant’ s application is hinged are frivolous, vexatious, contemptuous, manifestly unarguable and unknown to law. ”