27/09/2026
COURT ORDERS PROSECUTION OF OSUN POLICE OFFICER FOR PERJURY
The Osun State Police Command arrested three members of the Accord Party on 1st September, 2026 for alleged malicious damage and subsequently obtained a remand order from the Osun State Magistrate’s Court on 4th September, 2026 authorising their detention for 14 days.
Upon the expiration of the remand order, rather than release the suspects on bail, charge them to court, or apply for an extension of the existing order, the Police Command filed a fresh ex parte remand application on 22nd September, 2026. In the new application, a fourth suspect was added, while the supporting affidavit falsely stated that the four suspects were arrested on 17th September, 2026.
In the view of the Court, the apparent purpose of the false averment was to mislead the Court into believing that the first three suspects were newly arrested and thereby secure a fresh remand order against them.
Unfortunately for the Police, the fresh application was coincidentally assigned to the same Magistrate who had granted the initial 14-day remand order on 4th September, 2026.
During the hearing of the second application, the learned Magistrate observed that he had previously granted the Police a 14-day remand order in respect of the first three suspects, who were expressly stated to have been arrested on 1st September, 2026. He was therefore confronted with the obvious contradiction in the new affidavit, which stated that the same suspects had only been arrested on 17th September, 2026.
More troublingly, the affidavit in the fresh application was deposed to by the same police officer who had earlier deposed to the affidavit filed on 3rd September, 2026, in which the arrest of the three suspects on 1st September 2026 was expressly stated.
The learned Magistrate, having considered the two conflicting affidavits, viewed the conduct as a flagrant attempt to deceive and mislead the Court into granting a fresh remand order for the continued detention of the first three suspects.
Consequently, the Magistrate dismissed the application and ordered that the police officer who deposed to the two contradictory affidavits be charged before the appropriate court for perjury.