11 February 2018
Pathetic pictures of Olisa Metuh on a stretcher, apparently unconscious, in a courtroom emerged yesterday.
I gathered that on the last adjourned date the judge ordered that the accused must be produced in court to stand trial. He warned that he will discountenanced any medical report from any hospital presented to the court to excuse the accused. The judge further warned that he will revoke his bail and send him to jail if he fails to appear in court.
Thus, in what turns out to be a dramatic obedience to his orders, Metuh's lawyers brought him, unconscious and on a stretcher, to court. The judge, Justice Okon Abang, must have been shocked, for he hurriedly adjourned the matter.
I understand why the judge will make such an order. Some lawyers will go to any length to manufacture medical reports to get lengthy adjournments and slow down the wheel of justice. This is why cases take years to conclude in our courts. Any judge worth his onions should be conversant with the tricks some lawyers play. And any judge who tries to put his foot down in situations like this should be commended. We cannot spend years and years on just a case. That's not encouraging. We cannot continue like this.
However, I think all the personnel and apparatus of state is available to a judge to verify the authenticity of a medical report when the court is in doubt. Bringing an unconscious man to court makes the whole thing looks like persecution not prosecution. Such a macabre show of cold blooded insensitivity should not be seen in the temple of justice.
The courts have the personnel and resources to check out the sick claims of an accused person and determine independently if he is well enough to attend court and stand trial. The court should have deployed these resources and personnel rather than sitting down, dishing out orders, and end up painting the court as insensitive when these orders are carried out.
This is 2018. We don't want a system where people use sick claims to delay trials but unconscious parties should not be wheeled to court either. Maybe I will would have held a different view if Metuh was even conscious enough to know where he was.
As my brother Dr Ahmed Idris will always say, "May God save Nigeria and Nigerians".
– Firsts Baba Isa (FBI)
Is a legal practitioner
