The State Security Service (SSS), on Tuesday, profiled embattled Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, as a member of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) for hiring the service of Abuja-based criminal attorney Maxwell Okpara as his counsel against charges of unlawful firearms possession that was recently filed against him by the secret police.

In a tweet that has attracted broad criticism from the citizenry, the secret police tried to create a logically non-existing nexus between Mr Okpara’s representation of Mr Emefiele and IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, implying that the suspended banker had become a member of the group for hiring its lawyer.

The service also used inappropriate words to disparage the lawyer in grossly unprofessional ethnic profiling meted out to the duo.

The secret police derogatorily referred to Mr Okpara as a “charge and bail, overzealous uninformed IPOB/ESN lawyer,” and impugned his professional decision to represent individuals under trial, including heads of organisations such as the IPOB, whose designation as a terrorist organisation has been controversial owing to its political implications.

“A Biafran Republic agitator and Outlawd IPOB counsel defending the suspended CBN governor. Is IPOB defending one of theirs?” the tweet partly read.

Mr Okpara has recently been vocal about the condition and treatment of Mr Kanu, who has been in SSS custody since June 2021 when he was illegally abducted from Kenya, in a manner which several legal minds have criticised as criminal. The SSS, on several occasions, refused Mr Kanu’s access to his lawyers, family members, and doctors, and he is being kept in solitary confinement.

The lawyer also recently took up Mr Emefiele’s brief after his arrest, which was initially justified by his recklessness in office, turned political following disobedience to court orders and extralegal tactics that the SSS played to keep the banker in their custody without trial.