Murder case: Ebonyi lawyer walk out of dock, disrupts court proceedings
focus on hammer, group of files on judge table covered with dust - concept of pending old cases or work at judicial court.
By Amarachi Ehia, Abakaliki
A well known lawyer in Ebonyi state, Sunday Ununu Friday afternoon disrupted the proceeding in Margistrate Court 1 in the high court premises of the state where he was arraigned for alleged murder case.
Ununu was said to have walked out of the dock claiming that the charges against him were not properly filed.
Ununu, the Principal of Bigbird chambers, a popular legal firm in Abakaliki has been in police custody for about two weeks after now after he accidentally shot a 36 year old orphan, Nnamdi Nwite while Izzi Unuphu land power of Attorney was celebrating their election for the new executives of the group.
After his arrest, three attempts has been made to arraign Ununu this week in the Magistrate court 1 presided by Ojemba Isu Oko but all failed.
In the last attempt which took place on Friday afternoon 6th September, 2024, Ununu walked out of the dock protesting that the charges against him were not properly entered.
His acting that lasted about two hours, disrupted court proceedings in other magistrate courts within the Magistrate court 1 where he was arraigned.
He was taken out of the court in a branded black police operational vehicle to the police headquarters by armed policemen who brought him to the court as the court couldn’t sit on the matter again.
It gathering that Ununu granted interview with some journalists after walking out of the dock but that the policemen came to the two journalists; Wilson Okereke of The Sun and Enyinnaya Omoke of the New Nigeria, ceased their phones and deleted the interview as recorded in the phones.
Meanwhile, a right group, Civil Liberty Organization (CLO) has petitioned Inspector General of Police Kayode Egbetokun seeking a transfer of the case file to force headquarters, Abuja.
CLO in a statement signed by Kindness Jonah of Enugu unit of the organization, alleged that some disgruntled members of the extended family of the deceased were insinuating clandestine settlement with some members of the state police command who are in the known of the notorious incident, and are now trying circumventing justice by liaising for a quantifiable settlement without due process.
“Barrister Sunday Ununu should be made to face the full weight of the law for callously cutting short the enterprising life of Mr. Nnamdi Ugo Nwite, and for even trying ‘‘settling’’ with distant relatives of the wasted blood without any modicum of regard for the nuclear family with aged mother, certainly due to their excruciating poverty level”, the petition read in parts.
The petition was copied to Governor Francis Nwifuru, the state Commissioner of Police, Family of Nnamdi Nwite, National Human Rights Commission among others.
When contacted, the state Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Joshua Ukandu dismissed the insinuations that the command was planning to cover the matter.
“How can we cover the matter, is he not in our custody. On this issue of his arraignment, I don’t have the details. For now, I don’t know anything about that but I know he has been in our custody”.
