According to Flemer Project Initiative (@the_flemer), an initiative which offers “free legal services to indigent awaiting trial detainees in Nigeria”,
Godday, who sells fish and raincoats at Bar Beach and allegedly suffers
from a communication deliquency had opened an account with an
undisclosed bank and deposited over a million naira.
When she went to collect some money, she had “issues with disparity between her names with the bank and her real name” causing them to request that she gets an affidavit and that is where her problem began.
Read the complete story below:
“Late December 2018, Rosemary Godday, was sent to jail for
owning a Bank Account. If you think this Sounds ridiculous, then you
better go ahead to read the full story.
Before her arrest and consequent incarceration last December,
Rosemary was a trader or better put, a hustler. She worked on the
bar-beach as a fish seller, barbecue vendor, raincoats seller amongst
other petty businesses that fetched her daily income.
While doing her business, she had a number of Bank Accounts,
but was depositing the bulk of her money in a personal savings Account
with a Commercial Bank that we’d rather not mention at the moment.
Last year, she had issues with disparity between her names with
the bank and her real name e.g Roseline instead of Rosemary. So she
went ahead to swear an affidavit to that effect.
Surprisingly, when she returned to the Bank with the sworn
Affidavit, the bank refused to acknowledge her as the owner of the
Account. This was done despite the fact that her signature matched the
one on other official documents relating to the Bank Account in
question.
The Bank not only denied her access to her Account, but in fact went ahead to arrest her for ‘fraud’ and forgery.
It didn’t take long for Rosemary to realize that all the money
in her Account had vanished into thin air. Yes, someone had emptied her
Account. According to her, the money in question was at least a million
Naira (she strongly believes it’s actually much more).
This was how Rosemary found herself in police detention. She
was eventually charged for forgery and stealing and has been in prison
custody since December 2018.
We met Rosemary at Kirikiri female Prison during our visit in May and decided to take on her case.
Today was the second time we would be appearing in court as her
legal Counsel. During our first appearance in court, the prosecution
counsel failed to produce his complainant and the IPO/Witnesses.
Today, the Prosecution Counsel who apparently had no case
against this lady, wanted to get another adjournment as neither the
complainant nor any of the supposed witnesses appeared in court again.
The Legal Counsel from FLEMER representing Rosemary wasn’t having any of
this today
She instead requested for the magistrate to strike out the
case, seeing that the prosecution was obviously not ready to proceed
with the case and it will amount to injustice for the young lady to be
sent back to jail. The magistrate obliged and went ahead to strike out
the case.
Right now, Rosemary is a free woman, but she is still
heartbroken as she has lost her life’s savings, has been unjustly
incarcerated for owning a Bank Account and has to start all over again.
While we explore legal avenues to help her get justice over her
missing funds, Rosemary still needs all the help she can get from the
public.
Note: many of the details of this story are missing because the
woman in question has some communication delinquency, which makes it
difficult for her to communicate except the listener is really patient
and understanding. We strongly believe this medical condition must have
made it easier for her to be framed and unjustly left to rot in jail.
Sigh ”
At the time of filing this report, Flemer Project Initiative is yet to respond to Guardian Life’s request for more information.
Culled from Guardian Nigeria
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