Bonny Nwankwo
An online comment about a powerful controversial politician and
businessman lands a South Africa-based Nigerian businessman in trouble:
police harassment and prolonged detention.
On July 13, four days after arriving Nigeria from his South Africa
base, Bonny Okonkwo was attending a business meeting in Surulere, Lagos
when his phone rang.
The caller on the other end announced that he was a police officer
from the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS. The officer ordered Mr.
Okonkwo to race back to his Mushin apartment immediately for an arrest.
When he arrived his apartment, half a dozen fully armed and stern
looking SARS officers were waiting with AK 47 rifles on their shoulders.
They dragged him from his car, pinned him to the floor, handcuffed
and loaded him into the trunk of a waiting SUV and drove off, in
commando style.
Defamation arrest
After he was offloaded at an Ikeja police station, a divisional police
officer informed him, for the first time since his ordeal began, the
reason for his abduction-like arrest.
A Nigerian ruling party politician and billionaire businessman, Emeka
Offor, had petitioned the police complaining that Mr. Bonny defamed him
in a contribution he made in an online discussion forum.
The Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Abubakar, had ordered his
arrest and detention after Mr. Offor petitioned the police boss through
Fortress Solicitors.
The police dragged Mr. Bonny to the station’s counter, documented,
stripped and pushed him into a holding cell where he spent six days in
solitary confinement.
Philanthropist or fraudster
Mr. Offor, a wealthy Nigerian oil baron, recently donated $1 million to
PolioPlus, an international polio eradication programme promoted by
Rotary International.
Mr. Offor, founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Chrome Group, a
Nigerian conglomerate with interests in oil trading, biofuels, dredging
and logistics, made the donation during the 2013 Rotary International
Convention in Lisbon, Portugal.
He had earlier in 2012 donated $250,000 to the humanitarians.
While the global giving community celebrated the emergence of another
cheerful giver, Mr. Offor’s gift to the Rotary International sparked a
heated debate among his folks, in an online forum for his kinsmen – a
group e-mail forum, Mbala Obodo, hosted by an association of Oraifite
indigenes known as ocean-anaedo on its website.
A good number of those who participated in the discussion praised Mr.
Offor for the donation. Others were however not impressed, nicknaming
him “Donatus Portugal” and criticizing him for the donations.
The dissenting voices also made reference to what they called Mr.
Offor’s ugly past, especially his alleged history of bank loan abuses,
and the poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment that lingers in his
ancestral home.
Mr. Bonny fell into the later category.
“In part of Igbo where this fella comes from, I am sure there is no
clean drinking water,no steady electricity, no hospital,” Mr Bonny said
in his post in the forum.
“From my own point of view, this is display of the highest stupidity
and wickedness at the international level,” Mr. Bonny said. “If Nigeria
is like America or Britain, he will be arrested on arrival and taken to
court for fraud. How can a man that defrauded one of the failed banks in
Nigeria over 5Billion as loan, but refused to pay this money so that
the poor depositors can get their money back, go to another country to
donate one million dollar, and some people are clapping their hands for
him on this forum? Even though I don’t know his state of mind when he
was making such donation, I guess madness like.”
Mr. Bonny’s post stood out from all the dissenting voices in the forum and immediately drew Mr. Offor’s fury.
“Mr. Boniface Okonkwo simply went beyond the usual vulgar abuse
characterizing their comments on Sir Emeka Offor to level criminal
allegations and make fraudulent imputations against the man,” Godson
Ugochukwu of Fortress Solicitors, Mr. Offor’s attorney said.
Mr. Offor got his attorneys to write him, demanding he retracts the
post, publish an apology in three Nigerian national dailies and on the
web. Mr. Offor threatened legal actions if his demands were not met
within 24 hours.
Mr. Bonny, confident he had said nothing new about Mr. Offor, replied the billionaire asking for a date in court.
“All I have said are in public domain and can be defended in court,” he told the businessman.
Mr. Offor was indicted by the senate in one of Nigeria’s largest
insider credit abuse that saw 13 banks collapse with N188 billion of
depositors’ funds.
The businessman was a director in the liquidated African Express Bank
Plc. He unduly used his position to acquire loans totalling N7.5bn, a
senate report on failed Nigerian banks said.
Only about N3.6bn of the loan was recovered.
Mr. Offor is also a major financier of Nigeria’s ruling Peoples Democratic Party and a major contractor with the government.
Anchoff Stronghold Limited, a subsidiary of the Chrome Group, has
clients that include Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Power
Holding Corporation of Nigeria, PHCN, Port Harcourt Refinery and
Petrochemical Company, PHRC, Warri Refinery, and National Integrated
Power Project, NIPP.
Prolonged detention
At the Ikeja police station, Mr. Bonny got nothing close to legal
action. “He was denied access to his family and lawyer” Sylvanus
Udedibia, his cousin said.
On the seventh day, he was moved to another cell out of Ikeja, where
he spent another night before the police shipped him up north, to a cell
in Garki, Abuja – Nigeria’s capital city.
After arriving the Abuja cell, on the ninth day in detention, he was
given his first breather, a “restricted” opportunity to reach out to his
lawyers.
All along, his family was only able to keep tabs on his changing
location through snippets of information discreetly fed them by
concerned police officers.
On Thursday, 13 days after he was arrested in Lagos, the Abuja police
command dragged Mr Bonny before a magistrate court on the outskirts of
the city, where he was charged for defaming Mr. Offor.
Mr. Bonny arrived the court in a police van, with police prosecutors, but without his attorney.
“The police did not inform us they were charging him that day,” Mr. Udedibia said.
At the court, Mr. Bonny informed the judge that the police had denied
him access to legal representation. The judge suspended the case by 24
hours, ordering the police to allow the victim access to his lawyers.
The following day, his lawyers presented an application for bail.
After hearing the bail application in the morning, the judge requested
time to consider the case and rule on the application.
Hours later, just before the weekend kicked in, the judge sent a clerk
to inform his lawyers and family that he was attending to a pressing
matter and could not deliver judgment that day.
Mr. Bonny was dragged back to his cell where he would spend the weekend.
Illegal detention
The Nigerian laws permits the police to hold a suspect for only 24
hours – and 48 hours where there is no court within reach – before
pressing charges.
Mr. Bonny was held for 13 days, eleven days more than what is allowed by the law.
But the police have, in several cases broken that law, holding
victims for longer days, especially if the victims were up against
influential accusers.
When asked about Mr. Bonny’s prolonged incarceration, Emeka Offor’s
lawyer, Godson Ugochukwu, who signed the petition on which the police
based its July 13 arrest of the businessman, was evasive.
Mr. Ugochukwu said the victim’s detention was a matter before a court. He also denied Mr. Bonny was ever held incommunicado.
The Federal Capital Territory police command, which is currently
prosecuting Mr. Bonny curiously denied knowledge of the case. Its
spokesperson, Altine Daniel, suggested the case was not been handled by
her command.
Frank Mba, Force spokesperson also said he was not aware of the case.
When pressed for justification for prolonged detentions, he argued that
every general rule have exceptions.
“Each case is treated on its individual merit,” he said.
Mr. Bonny’s family and kinsmen in the Oraifite community of Anambra
state are deeply saddened by the billionaire’s use of state authorities
to intimidate and incarcerate Mr. Bonny, Fidelis Okonkwo, the victim’s
younger brother, said.
“Whatever he is accused of, he should have been charged a long time ago,” Mr. Okonkwo added.
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