Former aviation minister Femi Fani-Kayode charged Nigerians to stand in solidarity with embattled police officer Abba Kyari who was fingered in multimillion dollar Internet fraud with Ramon Abbas, popularly known as Hushpuppi.
It was earlier reported how Hushpuppi, an Internet kingpin, bribed Mr Kyari to jail his turncoat co-conspirator Kelly Chibuzo and how an American court ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation to arrest and detain Mr Kyari for his role in multimillion-dollar fraud involving Huspuppi.
This development elicited much criticisms from Nigerians and engineered the eventual suspension of Mr Kyari from work while he is being probed by the Nigeria Police Force.
In his second intervention on Mr Kyari’s saga, Mr Fani-Kayode, who had first described Mr Kyari as a crime buster, on Sunday said Nigerians must oppose the extradition of Mr Kyari to the U.S.
Muddling the travails of secessionist agitators with that of a fraud-stained police chief, Mr Fani-Kayode urged Nigerians to stand in solidarity with Mr Kyari like they stood against the extradition of IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho.
Messrs Kanu and Igboho are both respective leaders of agitation for independent People of Biafra and Yoruba Nation. Mr Kanu was last month abducted in Kenya and brought back to Nigeria to face prosecution, while Mr Igboho is still in detention in Benin Republic where he was arrested while he tried to travel to Germany.
“We have insisted on due process and the presentation of hard evidence before my friend and brother Sunday Igboho can be extradited from Cotonou to Nigeria. We have condemned the illegal manner in which the Kenyan authorities kidnapped Nnamdi Kanu and returned him to Nigeria,” Mr Fani-Kayode said in a Facebook post on Sunday.
He added “Those that are complaining about us asking for due process and insisting on the presentation of hard evidence before a court of law before Abba Kyari can be extradited to America are myopic and naive. You cannot insist on due process for Igboho and Nnamdi Kanu and deny it to Abba Kyari.”
Mr Fani-Kayode further said that Mr Kyari is a Nigerian who deserve protection, saying that it is shameful for Nigeria to hand him over to the U.S.
“Why should we not accord Abba the same benefit of the doubt or protection given the fact that he is also a Nigerian. Or is it that some Nigerians are more equal than others?” Mr Fani-Kayode asked.
“The fact that Abba is a policeman or a northern Muslim does not mean we should feed him to the dogs. The fact that he was in SARS does not mean we should crucify him. Resigning our sovereignty to the Americans and acting as if they are God by considering one of our own guilty simply because they have indicted him or wish to investigate him is utterly shameful,” he added.