Human rights lawyer Festus Keyamo has given the Director General of the state security services and the Inspector General of Police seventy two hours ultimatum to arrest and prosecute ex Niger Delta militant Mr. Government Ekpemupolo aka (Tompolo) or risk appearing in court to tell Nigerians what is stopping them from doing so.
Keyamo stated this in a letter to the two security bosses dated Tuesday 18 of November, 2014 and copied to president Jonathan.
According to the letter, Tompolo had on Sunday 16th of November kidnapped tortured and nearly killed fourteen journalists from different media houses, who had gone to Ogidingben, Delta State on Sunday, November 16, 2014, to get first-hand coverage of the crises leading to the cancellation of the commissioning of the EPZ Project by President Jonathan two days earlier and were escorted to the venue by seven other people who are indigenes of the area.
The letter revealed that the journalists and their seven escorts were accosted and abducted on their way back by Tompolo’s boys who surrounded their boat with about ten of them before abducting and taking them to his residence where they were tortured and given a beating of their lives. It revealed that one of them Tokunbor Oluwaleye is still in a critical condition having sustained internal injuries.
He revealed that it took the intervention of some people in high places before the journalists and their escorts were grudgingly released by Tompolo to the Naval and Army personnels.
Describing the ineptitude of the security agencies to look into this matter and other allegations that have been raised against Tompolo as both a national and international embarrassment, Keyamo wrote “Sirs, your failure to simply carry out your statutory duties of arrest, investigation and prosecution of Tompolo for his various acts of lawlessness is now a national and an international embarrassment to the Government of President Goodluck Jonathan. It is disgusting to all men of normal minds to see a private citizen strutting all over the place, threatening lives, abducting citizens, (perhaps silently killing voiceless persons) and you hide your heads in the sand. Yet, he moves about with nearly a whole platoon of Army and security personnel that even a serving Governor cannot get. What is going on?’’
Keyamo recalled that the SSS and the Police have not sent him a letter of acknowledgement to the one he sent to them two weeks ago informing them of the threat to his life by this same Tompolo. He therefore threatened to drag the DSS and the IGP to court if after seventy two hours they fail to arrest and prosecute Mr. Government Ekpemupolo for the threat to his life and the attempted murder of some journalists alongside seven others. “I would want you to come and tell the court what is tying your hands against Tompolo” he concluded.
