A group of legal practitioners, under the aegis of Lawyers of Conscience, has appealed to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to call his men to order over their alleged incessant harassment of an Abuja-based human rights activist and lawyer, Victor Giwa.
The lawyers also called on the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) to wade into the matter by calling the Police to refrain from further harassment of the lawyer.
Addressing the media on Wednesday, on behalf of the group, Barrister Maxwell Opara, threatened to sue the IGP in his capacity as Kayode Egbetokun if he fails to act accordingly.
Narrating how the issue started, Opara said, that a staff of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mrs Asabe Waziri, who bought a multi-million naira property in the Maitama district of Abuja, led to a series of litigations.
According to the lawyer, Waziri was alleged to be instigating the Police to carry out unlawful acts in respect of cases pending before courts of competent jurisdictions.
The purchase of the multi-million naira property by Waziri was said to have attracted several court cases before the FCT High Court, during which an order was issued for her eviction due to her alleged faceoff with other property owners in the apartment as well as financial infraction in the purchase transaction.
Upon the order of the court, Waziri was evicted from the property, but was however, said to be bitter with the eviction carried out by bailiffs of the FCT High Court.
Although she was said to have challenged her eviction in court, and the suit is still pending, Opara accused Mrs Waziri of resorting to self-help with the unlawful use of the Police to achieve what she could not achieve in the open court.
Opara specifically said the Police have no business dabbling into a pure civil transaction of property purchase and added that the Police, as a law-abiding institution, should allow the matter to be fully determined by the court instead of acting as a court of its own.
He said, it was wrong of Mrs Waziri to use the Police to harass Victor Giwa, who is a counsel to the property developer, Abbey Signatures Ltd, and warned the IGP and his officers to stop taking laws into their hands by unlawfully and illegally supporting Waziri to intimidate and harass Victor Giwa.