VICTOR AYENI writes about the continuous detention of a 29-year-old man, Chidozie Ajokuji, 10 years after he was arrested as a teenager for robbery in 2014
Behind the iron bars of the Kirikiri Correctional Centre in Lagos, 29-year-old Chidozie Ajokujie was lost in his thoughts of hopelessness as life in the outside world has become a mirage, drifting far from his reach.
Chidozie was 19 years old when he was wrongfully jailed for robbery in 2014. Now grown into a man, each day he has spent behind bars feels like an eternity, with no end in sight.
Saturday PUNCH learnt that since his detention, the distraught man has been in court over 50 times, trying to regain his freedom, but the justice he sought has been evasive, compounding his despair as he languishes in jail.
Our correspondent gathered that Chidozie (also known as Junior) was arrested along with three other suspects – Abass Oyeniyi, Peter Oloyede, and Prosper Odijeh – who were subsequently charged with robbery and conspiracy.
According to his mother, Mrs Modupe Ajokuji, who was interviewed by The PUNCH in July 2020, Chidozie had gone to charge his laptop in his friend’s landlord’s apartment in the Abati area of Egbeda, in 2014, when policemen from the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad stormed the house and arrested him and others.
The SARS operatives accused the four suspects of dispossessing a lawyer, identified as Yemi Omodele, of his 2010 model Lexus SUV on December 23, 2013.
