He claimed to have booked lodging at the hotel where the meeting would be held and that he had traveled to Abuja to facilitate a human rights meeting with numerous NGOs. He asserted that as soon as he touched down, he sent messages to his friends in Abuja reassuring them that he was present.
His friends would visit him at his lodging to say hello like they always do whenever he was in Nigeria, enjoy a drink, and chat in general. This time was no different.
Her female friend was the first to arrive at his lodge out of all the individuals he texted. He stated that she arrived at the hotel at around 6.40 p.m. after he had checked in at around 6.20 p.m. Just fifteen minutes later, three policemen knocked on his door and forced their way inside the house without a warrant.
They both questioned why when they saw his friend and asked if she would want to go with them. The cops retorted that his acquaintance shouldn’t have been in the hotel with him because she was a married lady. After a while of back and forth, one of the officers began to videotape it on his phone. In total, around six additional police officers were called in as support. Along with him, some of his other friends arrived, and the hotel staff also entered. After a while of him refusing to voluntarily follow them, the officers finally told him that he was going to be arrested and took him to the station.
He was requested to write a statement, but refused to do so in the absence of his attorney. They called him for a DPO interview after some time behind the counter. The DPO countered that it was highly suspicious for a married woman to be visiting him (as we were in Northern Nigeria under the Penal Code), and the police were within their rights to have intervened and entered his hotel room without going through all that process, which led him to ask where there is evidence that any offense had been committed.
She eventually became tired of his lecture and requested that they arrest him and take him to the cells. When he kept acting “rowdy” and tried to show that he understood the law and police procedure, it seemed as though all the police officers had been offended, and placing him into custody for the evening was apparently done to “teach me a lesson.”
