Headfort Foundation, a prison reform initiative, has detailed how Friday Tower, a truck driver, spent six years in Kirikiri prison, for trying to secure his brother’s release after arrest by men of the now defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) unit, in Ikeja, Lagos.

In a Twitter thread dated April 20, the foundation said the Bayelsa State-born truck driver received a call from one of his cousin’s in February 2016, notifying him of his elder brother’s arrest by officers from the SARS unit.

According to the thread, Tower visited the unit’s office to secure his brother’s release, but the officers he met immediately tagged him an accomplice to the crime his brother was alleged to have committed.

Tower, his brother and three other defendants would later be charged with ‘conspiracy, kidnapping and robbery’.

6 years in custody for looking for his brother…

Tower is from Bayelsa State, Nigeria but resides in Lagos State as a truck driver. Tower got a call from his Cousin sometime in February 2016 that his elder brother was arrested by some policemen. While making all efforts to pic.twitter.com/lHjffIQXXM

— Headfort Foundation for Justice (@HeadfortF) April 20, 2022

After spending an initial four months in police cell, the truck driver and the four other defendants were later arraigned before a Lagos magistrate court in June 2016. During proceedings, Tower was refused bail and remanded at the Kirikiri Medium Correctional Centre, Apapa, Lagos.

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“On November 9, 2021, a correctional official at the Kirikiri Medium Facility assigned the matter to our mobile stand,” the foundation tweeted.

“Tower later met with a Headfort Foundation lawyer under our ‘Lawyers without Border’ Project.”

After taking the driver’s brief, the foundation said its probing at the court revealed that the matter had been pending the issuance of legal advice since 2016.

“They said it had undergone several adjournments because of the legal advice, the non-appearance of the defendants, different magistrates taking over the matter, the inability to locate the file, and so on,” the tweet reads.

“We went to court for Tower, but our major problem was that the Kirikiri Medium Correctional Facility officials did not show up with any defendant.

“This is despite our repeated issuance of reproduction warrants until our lawyer applied to the court to authorise the correctional officer in Kirikiri to give information about the whereabouts of the other four defendants.”

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Headfort said on February 21, the correctional officer eventually produced only Tower.

When the foundation demanded to know the whereabouts of the other four defendants in the case, the correctional officer produced evidence to show that they released three on bail in 2016, while the fourth defendant, Tower’s elder brother, died in custody.

“Our lawyer made an excellent case to show that Tower was just a victim of the unprofessional conduct of some police officers. The court ordered the immediate release of Tower,” Headfort said.

“He spent 6 years in custody before regaining his freedom.”