Crime
Beninese lawyer hangs out Igboho’s dirty linen; says client’s outburst worsens his case
After a long spell of silence, which, as now revealed, indicated Yoruba jingoist Sunday Adeyemo Igboho was not in the best of terms with the 10 lawyers representing him in Benin where he is currently in jail, his Beninese legal team has finally revealed its problem with its client.
Ibrahim Salami, the Beninese lead lawyer and law professor, reacted Tuesday to a series of outburst credited to Igboho in a leaked phone conversation.
Igboho dismissed the lawyers as useless, and stated how he walked away from Salami who came to meet him in jail.
“Are these ones lawyers,” Igboho said, referring to their inability to deliver on their promise of getting him out of jail despite up to N5 million he claimed he paid each of the 10 lawyers.
But Salami, in an interview with BBC, reacted by making out his client as a kind of narcissist.
Igboho’s Nigerian lawyers have their complaints of him too.
The lead lawyer Aliu Yomi once described his client as a prattler.
Likewise Gani Adams, OPC’s leader and Aare Ona Kakanafo. He has also complained of Igboho’s mouth running riot.
“He wants things to be done faster,” Salami added in Yoruba.
He said Igboho was angry with him and other members of the legal team because he felt he had no reason to remain in police detention for “not committing any crime”.
But the Beninese authorities arraigned him for forging documents, conspiring with immigration officials, and causing civil unrest in Benin.
Igboho, declared wanted, and his travel documents seized along with weapons the DSS claimed they recovered from his house at Soka, Ibadan, was arrested in July while he was about to board a flight to Germany—as a Benin citizen.
He has since been dumped in jail while trial lasts.
He was not only angry in the audio leak, but also broken, saying he was ready to come and face detention in Nigeria.
“I am not even afraid of the judge. Let him do what he likes,” he said of the Beninese judge.
Salami however said the activist’s words in the leaked audio were dangerous for the justice being pursued. The lawyer has been warning him and his supporters about the Bein legal system—as not favourable to rabble pressure.
But he admitted his client has the right to be angry.
The Benin-Republic-based lawyer hinted that the issues have been resolved, adding that he was continuing his work with other members of the team.