The arrest of a pipeline surveillance contractor in Bonny Local Government Area of Rivers State, Richard Abbey, is currently generating some furore as his lawyer, Ajayi Olusegun, claims he has been under detention by the Department of State Services (DSS) for over two weeks now.

Abbey’s lawyer, Ajayi Olusegun told a Magistrate Court in Port Harcourt that the since his arrest by the Department of State Services (DSS) he has being denied access to his lawyer and family.

Ajayi claimed that the DSS picked him up at about 2.00AM on Friday, July 16, 2022 from his residence Port Harcourt, Rivers State, stressing that the intelligence agency has since then held him incommunicado.

“They just detained without arraigning him in court. Keep him in perpetuity there in their detention. It is against the laws of our nation.”

“SSS has not made any comment, they have not told anybody the reason why he was arrested. They have not up till date.”

“They have refused his lawyer, that is myself who has been going there from day to day they refused us to see him. They refused his family members to see him. All his relations, nobody has been able to see him.”

But the DSS was yet to issue any statement confirming or denying responsibility for the arrest of Richard Abbey, who is said to be the Team Lead of the Bonny Kingdom Freedom to Operate Committee.

Efforts by Kristina Reports to get a confirmation from the agency was yet unsuccessful as at the time of this report.

Ajayi Olusegun had approached a Magistrate Court in Port Harcourt with an exparte motion asking the court to determine the legality or otherwise of his client’s arrest, asserting that the nation’s extant laws does not confer on the DSS the leverage to arrest and detain his client beyond 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Magistrate A.O. Amadi-Nnah, who presided over the matter, has ordered the DSS to produce Richard Abbey in court.

The legal practitioner expressed fear that his client may have been killed, challenging the DSS to produce Mr. Abbey in court as ordered to show that he was still alive.

“The court ordered that he should be produced in court tomorrow. We don’t know whether they have killed him.  The DSS, they were in court today, their lawyer was in court.”

According to Olusegun, there were unconfirmed claims that the security agency was acting in response to a petition against his client, which he said bordered on illegal oil bunkering.

“Apparently, from our own suspicions and from an inside story there was a petition that he is a bunkerer. That is the inside story we got.”

He, however, insisted that his client was averse to such acts of criminality, stating that “this man is not into any of such things. He doesn’t allow all those oil bunkerers to touch his line that he protects. He disallows them, he chases them away, destroys their vessels and all that.”    

Unconfirmed reports, however, indicate that his arrest may not be unconnected to the ongoing mop up of elements that have the capacity to disrupt the forthcoming 2023 polls, especially, those with the capacity to instigate crisis or undermine security in any locality.

It was, however, unclear if the DSS and other security agencies view Mr. Abbey as someone of interest in the lines of this consideration, some close allies hinted Kristina Reports, albeit in confidence, that he remains someone trusted by key stakeholders in Bonny as being of good character.