Wike triumphs over IGP as court declares Rivers rerun police panel illegal

Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike has emerged triumphant in his case challenging the constitutionality of the Rivers rerun election panel set up by the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris.

A Federal High Court in Abuja on Tuesday declared the police 15-member panel, which probed violations during the December 10, 2016 Rivers State election rerun as illegal.

Idris had after the election set-up a 15-man committee to probe illegalities during the election and had submitted the result of the probe to the Attorney General of the federation.

However, upon the setting up of the probe by Idris, Wike had gone to court to challenge the legality of the panel.

However, in a 106-paged judgment that lasted over five hours on Tuesday, Justice Gabriel Kolawole, who presided over the case, said the Police probe panel which included operatives of the Department of State Service (DSS), was “a strange contraption whose existence will create legal doubt”.

According to the judge, the 15-man Special Joint Investigative Panel set-up by police is a body unknown to any law in the country, adding 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.

Kolawole further held that the panel, in so far as it was not restricted to the Nigerian Police Force over which the IGP has authority, but included another security agency, does not have the backing of any known law in Nigeria.

“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, he held.

However, the court accepted that under section 4 of the Police Act, the IGP, has the power to constitute an investigative panel.

The court meanwhile said it was not going to quash the report of the panel but will leave it to the discretion of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, 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 added that the court would have annulled the report of the panel which Police has submitted to the AGF, had it been that a copy of it was tendered before the court by the plaintiffs.

While, the judge said the court could not also disband the panel since it has already concluded the said investigation and submitted its report, he nonetheless held that the Police panel lacks the power to indict any person or to make definitive pronouncements, but could at best make recommendations.

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