Journalist and activist, Agba Jalingo, has narrated how embattled former head of the Intelligence Response Team, Abba Kyari, locked him up in a car trunk and drove him from Lagos State to Calabar, the Cross River State capital.
Jalingo, who disclosed this in a statement on Monday, also accused operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA of giving preferential treatment over their failure to handcuff Kyari and other suspects in court on Monday.
WITHIN NIGERIA had earlier reported that Kyari and other co-defendants appeared before an Abuja court on Monday after the Federal Government, through the NDLEA, arraigned him and others on eight counts bordering on conspiracy, obstruction, and dealing in cocaine, and other related offences.
While two of Kyari’s accomplices pleaded guilty to the charges preferred against them, Kyari said he was innocent.
Jalingo recalled his prison ordeal in 2019 for 179 days at the Afokang Prison in Calabar following an allegation of treason by the Cross River State Governor, Benedict Ayade.
He was subsequently released on February 17, 2020, on bail.
The activist revealed that Kyari and ACP Sunday Ubua (also in NDLEA’s net) drove him by road in a car trunk from Lagos to Calabar.
Jalingo said, “Abba Kyari and ACP Ubua were paid by the Cross River Government to arrest me from Lagos, drive me by road in the booth of a Toyota Highlander and hand over to Calabar. I will never forget and don’t ask me to.”
“I was charged. Every day I appeared in court, I arrived with my hands and handcuffs lifted in the air.
“Today, these men are in court, the same men who enjoyed parading their own suspects gleefully in the media, even against the law, they are now covering their faces. Covering their faces from what exactly! The same cameras they flaunted in the faces of those they kept and refused to even take to court?” he asked.