Pharmacist detained for threatening to kill Buhari, Kyari with sniper

Following the arrest and subsequent detention of his son, Emmanuel Akuma, a pharmacist, at the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCIID) in Abuja, Mr Solomon Akuma, has narrated how the police tricked him to get his son arrested.

Mr Solomon, a senior pastor at the Truevine Evangelical Mission based in Delta State, told Premium Times that his son, a pharmacist intern with the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), was arrested on April 2, 2020, in Aba, Abia State.

Emmanuel, 29, was arrested after he tweeted that he would “pay a Russian sniper to eliminate Buhari and Kyari”, apparently referring to President Muhammadu Buhari and his then Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari.

This tweet, according to the publication, was in response to a Twitter post asking respondents what their next move would be if they got $1 million.

Mr Solomon said:

“It was me they used as bait to get to my son. They used me as their link. Someone must have dug up my profile and they found out that I was a pastor.

“Someone called me that I had prayed for him at a place. He said he wanted to honour me and that he and others would be coming on a particular date.

“They also said that they would visit me and give me an honorarium. I said I was not really aware of what they were talking about.

“I was not around at the time because I went for burial in my hometown. So I lodged in my in-law’s place.

“I said no problem, but something ministered to me that those guys were not what they said they were and as it turned out to be, they were policemen.”

He said he reluctantly agreed to meet with them at his in-law’s place and subsequently, everyone got arrested and their phones were seized.

Mr Solomon said the policemen later used his phone to call his son and lure him to the scene.

“So, at that point, they gave us back our phones, and they took him to the police station, down to Umuahia, to Enugu and the next day, they went to Abuja,” he said.

He said the family had to rush down to Abuja after they discovered that Solomon was being held at the FCID.

After being detained for three months, Emmanuel was charged with terrorism, sedition, criminal intimidation, and threat to the life of the President. He was later arraigned at the Federal High Court in Abuja.

He said after the trial was delayed, his son remained in detention.

He further told Premium Times:“I would say that it was his annoyance against the Federal Government that made him write (the tweet) what he wrote, because the government had been owing the mother since her retrenchment from the federal service.

“She worked at the Nigeria Airways and the workers had been retired since 2002, and they didn’t pay them until my wife fell sick for four years.

“We spent everything in our hands until she died in 2017. So, it pained my son so much.”

Following the accusations, the Force Headquarters in Abuja is yet to react to the development.