Again, arraignment of murder suspect in Ebonyi fails over drama in court

Proceedings at the premises of Ebonyi State High Court were disrupted on Friday morning during the arraignment of a legal practitioner, Sunday Ununu over alleged murder.

The melodrama which took place in the Magistrate Court 1, brought to an abrupt end, all proceedings of litigants when he refused to be docked.

The suspect, Ununu, who is the Principal partner of Bigbird Chambers, a popular legal firm in Abakaliki has been in detention at the police command headquarters, Abakaliki for about two weeks after a stray bullet he fired from a pistol in his possession hit a 36-year-old orphan, Nnamdi Nwite.

The unfortunate incident occurred when the community, the Izzi Unuphu land power of Attorney, was celebrating their election for the new officers of the group.

Before now, there were several attempts to arraign Ununu in the Magistrate Court 1 presided over by Ojemba Isu Oko but were unsuccessful.

In the latest today, Ununu was docked and as usual, he came out of the dock protesting that the charges against him by the police were not properly entered.

The drama, which lasted for about two hours, disrupted proceedings in other magistrate courts within the premises where he was arraigned.

After the drama, Ununu was taken out of the court in a branded black police operational vehicle to the police headquarters by armed policemen who brought him to the court while the Magistrate court one couldn’t sit on the matter.

Ununu had granted an interview to some journalists after walking out of the dick but the policemen came to the two journalists; Wilson Okereke of The Sun and Enyinnaya Omoke of the New Nigeria, ceased their phones and deleted the interview as recorded in the phones.

Meanwhile, a rights group, Civil Liberty Organization(CLO) has petitioned Inspector General of Police Kayode Egbetokun, seeking the transfer of the case file to the force headquarters, Abuja.

CLO in a statement signed by Kindness Jonah of the Enugu unit of the organization alleged that some disgruntled members of the extended family of the deceased were chimerically insinuating clandestine settlement with some members of the state police command who are in the know of the notorious incident and are now trying to circumvent justice by liaising for a quantifiable settlement without due process.

“Barrister Sunday Ununu should be made to face the full weight of the law for callously cutting short the enterprising life of Mr. Nnamdi Ugo Nwite, and for even trying ‘‘settling’’ with distant relatives of the wasted blood without any modicum of regard for the nuclear family with aged mother, certainly due to their excruciating poverty level”, the petition read in parts.

The petition was copied to Governor Francis Nwifuru, the state Commissioner of Police, the Family of Nnamdi Nwite, National Human Rights Commission among others.

When contacted, the state Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Joshua Ukandu dismissed the insinuations that the command was planning to cover the matter.

“How can we cover the matter, is he not in our custody? On this issue of his arraignment, I don’t have the details. For now, I don’t know anything about that but I know he has been in our custody”, he told Daily Sun.