A/Ibom in battle of wits with sports presenter
After 31 days in the custody of the Akwa Ibom State Command of the State Security Service, Mr. Kufre Carter, a sports presenter with XL 106.9 FM in Uyo, has regained freedom.
Carter was released on Wednesday but his travails are not over as he is scheduled to appear at the Chief Magistrate’s Court in Uyo on June 1 on a criminal case filed against him by the state government.
Carter was said to have got himself into trouble with the government when through a phone conversation, he attacked the Commissioner for Health, Dr Dominic Ukpong, over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government felt slighted and on this basis, the Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Barrister Uwemedimo Nwoko, took Carter to court on a three count charge of criminal defamation.
Carter applied for bail and it was granted in the sum of N3m but the bail money was contested at the State High Court by Carter’s counsel. The court granted his prayers and Justice Archibong Archibong reduced the bail money to N200,000. Carter met the bail conditions on May 22 but the SSS refused to let him go, purportedly on the orders of the state government.
Now Carter is free, but his lead counsel, Barrister Inibehe Effiong, is adamant that the fundamental human rights of his client were violated on the claims of a purported defamation. He said his client would seek redress in court and claim damages and a public apology, as well as ancillary reliefs.
In a release notifying the public that Carter had been released, the human rights lawyer wondered how “defamation of character’ affects the internal security of Nigeria for his client to be held by the SSS.
He argued that the claims of government had no bearing with its statutory mandate under Section 2 (3) of the National Security Agencies Act of preventing and detecting crimes against the internal security of the country.
He insisted that it took the intervention of the Director General of the SSS, Alhaji Yusuf Bichi, who ordered the command in Akwa Ibom to comply with the valid and subsisting court order, before his client was released.
He affirmed that on the case, he would not allow the rule of law to be “sacrificed on the altar of political expediency”, and denied government’s claims that his client had apologized to the government before he was released, saying they had no reason to apologise.
He described the case as that of “oppression, state sponsored terror and persecution”, saying, “No amount of threat, blackmail or intimidation would make us to apologise or beg them.”
Effiong went ahead to indict the leadership of the NUJ, Akwa Ibom State Council of complicity in the matter, saying since the union had publicly disowned his client, it had no right to carry out clandestine meetings on Carter’s behalf with government, in the name of trying to get him released.
He decried those he said, “clandestinely bargained for apology with the government in an attempt to give the government a soft landing”, saying they did so “in bad faith” as his opinion and that of his client were not sought.
But when the NUJ chairman in Akwa Ibom State, Comrade Amos Etuk, was contacted on the matter, he said Kufre Carter was not a journalist, as such, the NUJ could not have intervened in his case as a union.
He however stated that as an individual, he made efforts to secure the release of Carter by contacting a human rights lawyer to intervene in the matter.
“The guy is not a journalist. I have tried my best personally as an individual, but his lawyer is not helping matters,” he said.
Further findings on the matter verified the claims of the NUJ chairman on the status of Carter. Mr Patrick Titus, a member of the Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) confirmed that Carter was an associate and not a registered member of the association.
On his part, Kufre Carter praised those who supported him, saying he would speak after his court hearing on June 1.