Osita Chidoka, a former aviation minister, has raised concerns over what he considered to be “unrealistic and prohibitive” demand for a condition for bail.

“The sureties must be serving federal civil servants of Grade Level 16 or above, each must own Abuja property worth N500 million. One must furnish a bank guarantee of N15 billion.

“An officer who enters service at Grade Level 08 and climbs over some 28 years to Grade Level 16 may earn, across an entire career, between N80 million and N100 million.

“Out of that come housing, the education of children, healthcare, transport, and other living expenses. By the court’s ruling, an officer must show assets worth five times his lifetime earnings and stand behind a liability of N15 billion, roughly 150 times everything an honest career could ever yield,” Mr Chidoka said while speaking on ‘Bail and the Dignity of the Law: A Call For Judicial Restraint’ on Tuesday in Awka.

Mr Chidoka explained that it was impossible for an honest and lawful public servant to produce the wealth the court expected from a respectable citizen. He said the implication was that only civil servants worthy of trust were those who acquired what their salaries could not explain.

He said the passport condition also compounded the situation because senior officers often travel on national interest, and stripping them of their passports interfered with the duties the state employed them to perform.

The ex-minister added that a court which found no real risk of flight could not, in the same breath, impose conditions fit for a fugitive of vast and unexplained means. He said the law could not have intended the weaponisation of wealth over character, pointing out that conditions that could not be met were not conditions but a denial of bail.

“It is keeping the presumed innocent in detention not because the law demanded it, but because their freedom was priced out of reach. The focus remains on the bail application, not on the innocence or otherwise of the accused persons.

“Let the courts secure attendance at trial, that is their duty, and let them stop there. The purpose of bail is to guarantee appearance and not to measure a man’s wealth, punish him before his guilt is proved, or to make honest public service a thing to be ashamed of.

“It is discriminatory and humiliating for those who do not live in the court-sanctioned prime neighbourhood and casts a cloud of corruption on public servants,” he said. 

(NAN)