Anyone above seven can be charged to court – Police

Abdullateef Fowewe

The Force Spokesperson, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, has said that anyone above age seven can be arraigned in court.

On Friday, November 1, 76 suspects, primarily minors showing signs of malnutrition, were arraigned related to the #EndBadGovernance protest. Six of them collapsed and were quickly taken out of the courtroom.

After their arraignment, the court granted bail to each minor at N10 million.

Reacting to outrages over the arraignment of minors for participating in the #EndBadGovernance protest, Adejobi, while speaking in an interview with Channels Television late Friday, added that the youngest among those arraigned is 13.

He said, “Those that are not criminally liable under the law, are the young ones below the age of seven.

“Once you are more than seven, you can be charged to court. The only thing is that you need to follow certain procedures to do that. But none of them is less than seven. I think the youngest should be 13. The fact that you are 13 years old doesn’t mean you cannot be charged to court.

“Even in the Children and Young Persons Act, you can still be charged to court. Because you are 13 years old, you can go to court. So we have charged them to court for this.

“These are those who actually are leveraged on the #EndBadGovernance protests; they hijacked the protests and they are so violent.

“They are people who were flying Russian flags and many foreign flags, which of course is a punishable offence.

“So they are criminally liable. We have not charged any underage in our own context here to court.”