Murder: Third attempt at arraignment of Ebonyi lawyer fails

The arraignment of an Ebonyi State lawyer, Sunday Ununu, who fired a pistol, hitting 36-year-old orphan, Nnamdi Nwite, failed for the third time.

This failure followed a melodrama at the High Court premises in Abakaliki on Friday, as Ununu disrupted proceedings in Magistrate Court 1, where he was arraigned for alleged murder.

Ununu, who is the Principal of Bigbird Chambers, a popular legal firm in Abakaliki, has been in police custody at the police headquarters in Abakaliki for about two weeks. This follows the incident where bullets fired from his pistol hit Nwite during the celebration of the election of new executives of the Izzi Unuphu Land Power of Attorney group.

There were three attempts to arraign Ununu this week in Magistrate Court 1, presided over by Ojemba Isu Oko, all of which failed.

In the last attempt, on Friday afternoon, September 6, 2024, Ununu was docked but protested that the charges against him were not properly entered.

The drama, which lasted about two hours, disrupted court proceedings in other magistrate courts within Magistrate Court 1.

After the drama, Ununu was taken out of court in a branded black police operational vehicle to the police headquarters by armed policemen who had brought him to court. Magistrate Court 1 was unable to sit on the matter.

Ununu gave an interview to journalists after walking out of the dock, but policemen seized their phones and deleted the interview recordings.

Among those whose phones were seized are including Wilson Okereke of The Sun and Enyinnaya Omoke of New Nigeria.

Meanwhile, the Civil Liberty Organization (CLO) has petitioned Inspector General of Police Kayode Egbetokun, seeking the transfer of the case file to Force Headquarters, Abuja.

CLO, in a statement signed by Kindness Jonah of the Enugu unit of the organisation, alleged that some disgruntled members of the deceased’s extended family were insinuating a clandestine settlement with some members of the state police command, attempting to circumvent justice through a 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 trying to ‘settle’ with distant relatives of the deceased without regard for the nuclear family, certainly due to their excruciating poverty level,” the petition read in part.

The petition was copied to Governor Francis Nwifuru, the state Commissioner of Police, the family of Nnamdi Nwite, and the 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,” he said in a Daily Sun report.”