Babatunde Olusola, an orphan and final year student of Chemical Engineering of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso, Oyo State, has been denied access to his lawyer by operatives of the Nigeria Police Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (FCIID), Abuja.
Human rights lawyer, Tope Akinyode, made the disclosure on Saturday after police blocked him from seeing the detained student.
Olusola was reportedly arrested on the instructions of Jonathan for creating a parody Twitter account of the former President.
Sources told SaharaReporters that Jonathan, who is on a peace mission to Mali, was aware that Olusola was an orphan whose academic pursuit was under threat owing to his continued detention.
Also, Jonathan had knowledge that parody accounts do not violate Twitter rules.
This is in addition to the fact that Olusola made express clarification in the biography of the parody Twitter account that it does not belong to the former Nigerian President.
Through the handle, Olusola reportedly fired many witty comments including some subtle jabs at Jonathan’s wife, Patience.
According to Sahara Reporters, undergraduate took ill and had been exhibiting symptoms of Coronavirus like sore throat among others.
Mr Wan, a Chinese and Olusola’s fellow inmate at the FCIID headquarters, tested positive for Coronavirus the same week the young man took ill.
Rather than test or treat him and other inmates, policemen have been wading off Olusola’s lawyers ever since SaharaReporters published the story of his ill health.
A particular Sergeant Lasisi, who is also Olusola’s Investigating Police Officer, has been discovered to be having some unjust plans against the detained student.
Despite perfecting his bail conditions, the student’s surety was yet to be verified by government officials after more than one week.
Akinyode said it was disturbing that his client’s release was being stalled by the police for no reason.
He said, “Twice I was denied access to Babatunde last week. I was told the IPO had to give his approval before I could see him.There’s no law that says a lawyer must obtain an IPO’s permit before he sees his client. This disgusting trend must stop. We will challenge it.
However, Nigerians have taken to twitter to react to the news. See some reactions below…
“I am very sure that guy detained for operating a Jonathan Parody account will be released but we all need to be careful. I don’t know why someone will wake up and next thing is to run a parody account for someone else..@_Taaooma once complained about this too. Pls let’s watch it.”
“There is nowhere in the world where it is a crime to run a parody account of anyone.Trump has thousands of Parody accounts and no one has lost sleep since. The guy was picked up because he is Nigerian living in a Nigerian where the law was meant for the rich to oppress the poor”
“You arrested a guy for just creating parody account but free blood tasty boko haram members. Creating parody account is nothing to that person who wake up to kill Nigerians daily. How can Jonathan who suppose to be answering questions over abuse of office now making arrest?”
“Nigerian Law knows no parody. Parody is personation in the Nigerian law, it is an intent to deceive. The only wrong here is that they should have charged him to a competent court instead of keeping him in their custody for weeks. People should be more careful.”
“Errrr Cyber Crimes Act 2015 actually doesn’t recognize parodies, it says “impersonation”, of course the arguments are for LLBs but it clearly criminalizes using parodies to do/say certain things. My own is why is he detained? Let him go or charge him so he defends himself. TF!”
