By Celestine Okafor (Editor-in-Chief) @CelestineOkaf11
Following a directive, on Thursday, by the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba Alkali, for the immediate prosecution of an Abuja-based female Professor and rights activist, Prof Zainab Duke Abiola, who was accused of physically assaulting a female police Inspector who is also her police orderly, an Abuja Magistrate Court has ordered the remand of Prof Abiola and her maid, Rebecca Enechido, another accused, in prison.
According to an order by the Chief Magistrate Court of FCT Zone 6, Abuja, Prof. Zainab Duke Abiola and her maid, Rebecca Enechido, are to remain in the Suleja Correctional Facility till Tuesday, October 5, 2022.
The accused were apprehended by the police for offences of assault and causing grievous bodily harm on her Police orderly, Inspector Teju Moses. Among the offences for which the legal practitioner and her maid are currently being tried, are alleged criminal conspiracy and causing physical hurt without provocation.
The Police charged Prof. Abiola of attempt to commit culpable homicide and intentional insult to cause a breach of trust. The court however ruled at the weekend that the suspects be kept in the Suleja Correctional Center until her case comes up for further hearing on the October 5 adjourned date.
According to the court's charge sheet, Prof. Abiola, an Mbaise- born woman and a former Presidential aspirant in the 2015 general elections, allegedly assaulted her police orderly along with some of her personal aides on Tuesday, September 20th, 2022, at her residence in Garki, Abuja, and in the process inflicted bodily harm on her, particularly on her face, which made her to bleed profusely.
Abiola and her accomplices, according to the police report, assaulted the woman police over her alleged refusal to breach professional ethics by carrying out menial and domestic chores at her house.
The Police said professor Zainab Duke Abiola and her domestic staff including her house maid, one Rebecca Enechido and a male suspect currently at large, conspired to inflict body injuries on the female police Inspector.
Police preliminary investigations allegedly revealed provable evidences of guilt and conspiracy on the part of Professor Abiola and her other accused aides.
The police boss, Usman Baba Alkali, while condemning the attack on the police officer, however, mandated that the other accused persons still at large should be immediately apprehended and equally prosecuted. NNL.
