A young Lagos man arrested in 2022 over an allegation involving slippers spent nearly four years in custody without being brought to court, according to Citizens Gavel, a justice advocacy organisation.
Citizens Gavel discovered his case during a prison visit and took it up alongside that of another man arrested during a hawking raid. Both men were eventually discharged and acquitted after the prosecution failed to establish a case against them.
Arrest Over Similar-Looking Slippers
Imagine being arrested because the slippers on your feet looked like someone else’s. Now imagine that instead of going home, you end up spending the next several years inside a correctional centre. The story sounds almost like something lifted from Chimeka Garricks’s A Broken People’s Playlist, where a young man named Godson is caught up in a police operation and arrested despite having nothing to do with the crime being pursued. The difference is that this time, the story is not fiction.
That is what happened to a young Lagos man who was arrested in 2022 and remained in custody until this week, according to Citizens Gavel. His name and exact age have not been made public, but Citizens Gavel and PUNCH describe him as a teenager. His alleged offence began with a complaint about slippers similar to those worn by the complainant.
Second Man Arrested During Hawking Raid
The other man freed alongside him was said to have been picked up by the police during a raid while he was hawking. Despite their different origins, both men were arrested in 2022, and both disappeared into the system without being taken to court.
It took a prison visit for anyone outside the system to realise what had happened. In January 2024, lawyers from Citizens Gavel visited the Medium Security Correctional Centre in Lagos. During interviews with inmates, they encountered the two men and discovered that they had already been in custody for months without appearing before a court. Their cases were then taken up by the organisation and were described as being almost as frustrating as the initial detention.
Court Proceedings and Delays
The lawyers had to track the matter through the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions before eventually locating it at the Court of Justice Coker. They first appeared in the case in March 2024. Over the following months, Citizens Gavel said its lawyers appeared before Justice Coker more than seven times. But despite the repeated adjournments, the prosecution did not produce a single witness.
In early 2025, the lawyers were told that Justice Coker was away on official assignment and that the case would be transferred, so they had to start tracking it again. They eventually discovered that the case had been transferred to the Court of Justice Oshodi. When they appeared before Justice Oshodi in March 2025, the court finally read the charges to the two men. Both pleaded not guilty.
Discharge and Acquittal
By the time the prosecution’s case ended, Citizens Gavel filed a No Case Submission, arguing that the prosecution had failed to establish a case requiring the defendants to answer. The court agreed, and the two men were discharged and acquitted.
Citizens Gavel, however, noted an interesting detail in the case. The organisation said that during the nearly four years the men spent in custody, not one member of either man’s family appeared in court. They had no other lawyer representing them either.
Nigeria’s Constitution protects personal liberty and says a person arrested on suspicion of an offence must be brought before a court within a reasonable time. Where a competent court is within 40 kilometres, the Constitution defines 'reasonable time' as one day, subject to the law’s exceptions. The Administration of Criminal Justice Act also lists speedy handling of criminal cases and reducing prison congestion among its objectives. Yet the two men spent almost four years waiting for their cases to properly move through the system.
