Crime: Pastor With 5 SS Children Receives Judgment July 6

[sicklecellnews]

For the past 6 years, Pastor Abel Olukayode Adewale, 57, has been embroiled in legal tussles against one of Nigeria’s biggest and most powerful banks. The whole saga began on March 5 2012, when the Apostolic Church pastor received an alert for the sum of N1 million on his account with Wema Bank Plc.

‘My family was overjoyed that God had answered our prayers,’ the pastor commented at the time.

But, soon enough, the joy turned into an abyss of pain, torture and dehumanization in police custody and two weeks at one of Nigeria’s most notorious prisons, the Kirikiri Prisons in Lagos.

Precedents

Up to the time the pastor received what seemed like manna from heaven, the family had received various sums of charity money from sickle cell clubs, doctors, churches and other similar organizations within the country. The pastor’s story first came into the limelight in 2009 when the African Sickle Cell News & World Report did a feature on his plight with the title, A Pastor’s Ordeal of Raising 5 Children With Sickle Cell. Since then major newspapers and radio stations within the country had taken up the story, some, like Sickle Cell News, publishing his account details with various banks so that public spirited individuals can chip in donations to assist the family.

Despite all the help, the family’s pit of neediness was bottomless and its head had to importune the helpers for more and more help. Sometimes the request would come at an inconvenient time: his own church once told him, ‘Look, you are not the only one who needs help – we can’t possibly pour the church’s entire resources into your hands!’

Ordeal

Rearing a child in a country where there is little or no government support – as in most African countries – is a financially backbreaking task, even for the upwardly mobile. For a full time pastor – his wife is a traditional midwife – whom heaven had gifted with special children, but overlooked to financially empower, it was a life accented all the way by relentless psychological trauma watching one or more child in pain, mounting medical bills and invariable penury. Thus, when he received a lump sum of N1 million the pastor thought his ordeal of impecuniousness was finally over.

Computer Glitch

Unknown to the pastor, a virus in Wema Bank’s etranzact computer system had – between 4th and 6th March 2012 – triggered the error which credited his account and that of several other customers with unearned sums running into millions of naira.

At first the pastor attempted to withdraw money with his Wema Bank ATM card but the same virus had shut down transactions on the bank’s machine. Subsequently the pastor made massive transfers totaling N987000 into his accounts with other banks, notably First Bank of Nigeria and Guarantee Trust Bank to facilitate withdrawal.

Police involvement

Accompanied by officers of the bank, police officers swooped down on Odogunyan, Ikorodu home of the Adewales. The pastor was accused of making an incursion into and stealing by electronic means the sum of N1 million from the vaults of the bank. He was detained for 5 days during which he was allegedly tortured and bodily harm inflicted. Various sums were also extracted from him and his phone was confiscated.

Upon his bail for the sum of N50000 (bail is supposed to be free!), the pastor was made to pledge a monthly refund of N100000.

On May 19th – after he had omitted to pay N100000 in April – the police picked up the pastor at home, and two days later charged him to court for the criminal offence of stealing. The magistrate granted bail with stiff conditions, which the pastor’s friends and relations were unable to meet. Thus he was remanded at Kirikiri Prison until June 5, two weeks of mingling with hardened criminals of every hue.

Human Rights Infringement

Upon his release from Kirikiri, Pastor Abel Olukayode Adewale and Beatrice Adewale slapped a N50 million suit on Wema Bank and the Lagos State Commissioner of Police. The couple was claiming damages for infringements on their fundamental human rights.

On January 14, 2013, Hon Justice O. Femi-Adeniyi delivered judgement, severely criticizing the police for turning themselves into a debt collector. She notes:

‘Despite (Wema Bank’s) knowledge that its computer system had malfunctioned, due to no fault (of the couple), it reported the matter to the police as a crime of stealing…’

Justice Femi-Adeniyi further censured the bank for dragging the police into what was at best ‘a civil debt’ and said both the police and the bank acted ‘mala fide’.

Justice Femi-Adeniyi held that’s the couples fundamental human rights had been infringed and ordered the bank to pay the applicants the sum of N2.5m damages. The bank was similarly ordered to publish an apology to the couple in three national dailies.

Dud Cheque Drama

Wema Bank Hq, Marina, Lagos

Six months after the judgment, Wema Bank had yet to comply. So, in September 2013, sheriffs of the Magistrate Court pasted Notice 48 on the main gates of Wema Bank Plc’s headquarters in Lagos. They were accompanied by a lorry-load of mobile policemen to enforce the court order.

Conscious of the huge embarrassment the scene was going to generate, top management staff of the bank met at an emergency meeting, the result of which was a check for the sum of N2.5m issued in favour of Adewale Abel Olukayode.

The overjoyed pastor and harried father deposited the check into his First Bank account and waited for an alert. He learnt the following day that Wema Bank had refused to honour its own check!

The bank has since appealed the judgment, and launched a criminal suit against the pastor.

Judgment Day On Criminal suit

Judgment on Wema Bank’s criminal suit (Commissioner of Police vs Adewale Olukayode, Suit No P/35/2012) is now fixed for July 6. The case is before yet another female judge, Hon Mrs. Owoyele, at Magistrate Court 12, Igbosere, Lagos.

Now radicalized by Nigeria’s slow-moving justice system, the pastor is upbeat and says ‘all will be well’.

‘Let Wema Bank prove to the world,’ posits he, ‘how a customer can steal money from his own account!’

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