If 22-year-old Tunde Ayodele had known what fate had in store for him when he left his home sometime in 2004, he probably wouldn’t have ventured out on that day. After the day’s job, he was on his way back from his mechanic workshop and was about to take a bike home when he found himself arrested by the police. He was accused of robbing someone of N400.
He was taken to the State Criminal Investigation Department (SCID), Panti, Lagos from the police station when there was no one to bail him after three months in police custody. According to the Ogun State indigene, he spent nine months in Panti before he was arraigned before a Lagos High Court. He was subsequently remanded in Ikoyi Prisons.
Speaking to Daily Sun, Ayodele, now 30, lamented that he lost his parents one after the other while he was in prison. “My parents died two years after each other. It was my younger sister who was selling moimoi that told me the bad news during her visits to Ikoyi Prisons where I was held. She told me that I had no parents again,” he lamented.
Reprieve came his way, however, when his case was taken to the Office of the Public Defender (OPD) in the Lagos State Ministry of Justice through a letter, and one of OPD’s lawyers, Ronke Adekoje, took up his case.
The matter, which is before Justice Ebenezer Adebajo of the Lagos High Court sitting in Igbosere, had been adjourned for about four times with no prosecution witness present in court to testify against the defendant at each adjournment. When the matter came up again on Monday and the same thing happened, Adekoje made an application for the discharge of the defendant. She submitted that the defendant should be released in line with his fundamental human rights, insisting that he was entitled to fair hearing.
Consequently, the trial judge released Ayodele on bail without conditions. When Daily Sun asked him how he felt about his release, he was virtually speechless. He bent down his head in contemplation. He described his experience as a very bitter one, saying he would never wish such to happen to even his enemy.
“It was a bitter experience. I can’t describe how I feel after coming out. I spent eight and a half years behind bars over something I know nothing about. I was taken to court over robbing somebody of N400. It is not something one should ever experience in life,” he said
-culled from the Sun
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