The police have said the mace that was stolen from the Senate chambers on Wednesday was recovered under the flyover before Abuja city gate.
The Deputy Force Public Relations Officer, SP Adeniran Aremu, in a statement on Thursday, said a “high-powered police investigation team” recovered the symbol of legislative authority where it was abandoned.
He added that an investigation to apprehend the suspects involved in the theft had been launched.
“The police teams engaged in massive raids of identified criminal spots, stop and search operations, visibility and confidence building patrols, intelligence gathering, which forced the suspected miscreants to abandon the mace at a point under the flyover before the City Gate, where a patriotic passerby saw it and alerted the police,” the statement read in part.
The High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja on Thursday restrained the police and the Department of State Services from arresting Senator Ovie Omo-Agege for the Wednesday’s disruption of the Senate’s proceedings and theft of the upper legislative chamber’s mace.
The Chief Judge of the FCT High Court, Justice Ishaq Bello, granted the restraining order shortly after Omo-Agege’s lawyer, Aliyu Umar (SAN), moved the senator’s ex parte application on Thursday.
According to the judge, the order is to subsist pending the hearing and determination of the senator’s motion on notice seeking similar prayers as contained in the ex parte motion.
If the motion on notice, which is to be served on all the four respondents to the suit, eventually succeeds, the restraining order would them become interlocutory which would subsist throughout the period of the hearing of the senator’s substantive suit.
Justice Bello, after granting the orders sought in the ex parte motion on Thursday adjourned the matter until May 7 for the hearing of the motion on notice.
But he re-assigned the matter to Court 30 which is being presided over by Justice Usman Musale in the Jabi Division of the FCT High Court.
By implication the hearing of the motion on notice would take place before Justice Musale on May 7.
Some thugs alleged to have link with the Delta Central senator, who was last week suspended by the Senate, invaded the upper legislative chamber on Wednesday disrupting proceedings and carting away the mace.
Video clips of the incident which went viral on social media showed Omo-Agege being accompanied into the chambers by the men who later fled with the mace.
The police of the FCT command later arrested the senator who was said to have been released shortly thereafter.
The police later, in a statement, said they had found the mace under the flyover near the National Stadium, Abuja.
Apprehensive of his possible re-arrest by the security agencies, Omo-Agege filed an ex parte motion and a motion on notice before the FCT High Court on Thursday.
The main suit is numbered FCT/HC/CV/1522/2018 and the ex parte motion M/5050/18.
The Attorney General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN); the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Ibrahim Idris; the Commissioner of Police, FCT Command, Mr. Sadiq Bello, and the Director General of the DSS, Mr. Lawal Daura, were joined as the respondents.
Ruling on the applicant’ ex parte application on Thursday, Justice Bello restrained the four respondents from arresting Omo-Agege pending the hearing of the senator’s motion on notice.
The court granted, “An order of interim injunction restraining the respondents, their agents and/or servants from arresting and/or detaining the applicant either in their custody of any other law enforcement agency, or its servants, agents or privies or through any person working in concert with the respondent as its agents, by whatever means or however described pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice filed in this suit.”
Punch
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