SAN FRANCISCO, May 09, (THEWILL) – An Abuja Federal High Court on Tuesday declared a 15-member panel that investigated malpractices during the December 10, 2016 Rivers State election rerun, “unconstitutional”.
The panel, which included operatives of the Department of State Services, DSS, was raised by the Inspector General of Police, IGP Ibrahim Idris, to probe allegations of violations and violence during the legislative re-run elections in the South-South state.
But the presiding judge, Justice Gabriel Kolawole, in a 106-page judgment that lasted over five hours, described the police probe panel as “a strange contraption whose existence will create legal doubt”.
He maintained that neither the Police Act, Security Agencies Act nor the 1999 Constitution, as amended, empowered the IGP to set-up and co-opt the DSS which is not answerable to him but to the Presidency, into the Rivers re-run probe panel.
The court held that the Special Panel, in so far as it was not limited to the Nigerian Police Force over which the IGP has authority, but co-opted another security agency, does not have the backing of any known law in Nigeria.
“It is to this extent that the panel is unknown to the Nigerian Law or Criminal Justice System, even though its findings may be useful to bona-fide security agency as a working document,” Kolawole said.
The court however acknowledged that under section 4 of the Police Act, the IGP, has the power to constitute an investigative panel.
