The Nigerian political activist, Deji Adeyanju, who was rearrested last week by the police, has been transferred from Abuja to Kano where authorities claim he has questions to answer in a murder case that was closed nearly a decade ago, his associates told us.
Mr Adeyanju was acquitted in the case in 2009, but the police have indicated they are revisiting the matter, a move activists say is an attempt by the Buhari administration to clampdown on a critical voice.
According to Premiumtimesng, Mr Adeyanju’s associates said his transfer to Kano was part of a plot by the Police to “eliminate” the activist. Mr Adeyanju has yet to be charged five days after his latest arrest.
“We wish to urgently draw the attention of Nigerians and the international community to the illegal incarceration, ethnocentric persecution, and state-engineered lethal plot to assassinate Comrade Deji Adeyanju, one of Nigeria’s leading civil rights activists by the government of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, using the institution of the Nigerian Police Force through the office of the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Kpotum Idris,” the activists said in a prepared statement at a press conference Tuesday.
The press conference was addressed by Ariyo-Dare Atoye, Raphael Adebayo and Moses Paul, three Abuja-based rights activists who have worked to get the police to release Mr Adeyanju since he was arrested last week.
The police held Mr Adeyanju at about 3:00 p.m. on Thursday as he went to pick up his phone at the Inspector-General of Police Monitoring Unit in Abuja. He was asked to come for the last of the three phones seized from him by the police when he was first arrested in late November and spent eight nights in custody.
