Rivers rerun killings: Court declares IGP’s panel illegal

A Federal High Court in Abuja yesterday declared as illegal, the Special Joint Investigative Panel that was set up by the Inspector General of Police, Idris Ibrahim, to investigate the violence that marred the December 10, 2016, legislative re-run election in Rivers State.

In a 106-paged judgment that lasted over five hours, Justice Gabriel Kolawole said the Police probe panel which included operatives of the Department of State Service, DSS, is “a strange contraption whose existence will create legal doubt.”

According to Justice Kolawole, the 15-man Special Joint Investigative Panel is a body unknown to any law in the country.

He held that neither the Police Act, Security Agencies Act nor the 1999 Constitution, as amended, empowered the IGP to set-up and co-opt the DSS which is not answerable to him but to the Presidency, into the Rivers re-run probe panel.

He maintained that the Special Panel, in so far as it was not limited to the Nigerian Police Force over which the IGP has authority, but co-opted another security agency, does not have the backing of any known law in Nigeria.

He said, “It is to this extent that the panel is unknown to the Nigerian Law or Criminal Justice System, even though its findings may be useful to bona-fide security agency as a working document.”

The court, however, declined to trash report of the panel, saying it would leave it to the discretion of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice to in the exercise of his powers under section 174 of the constitution, decide whether any valid charge could be drafted on the basis of a report that emanated from “a body unknown to law.”

Justice Kolawole stated that assuming a copy of the report was tendered in the court by the plaintiff,  he could have nullified report of the panel which Police has already submitted to the AGF.

He said the court could not also disband the panel since it has already concluded the said investigation and submitted its report.