Lock down: Court convicts 311 defaulters in Kaduna

From: Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

Kaduna state has convicted 311 culprits who violated the Quarantine Law, which stipulates restriction of movement, out of the 373 people that were apprehended in two days, Commissioner of Justice and Attorney General Aisha Dikko has disclosed.
This was contained in a statement made available to media in Kaduna Wednesday.
The statement stated that the ‘’convictions were made by the eight mobile courts that were set up last week to try residents who flout the restriction of movement order and other Covid-19 Protocol violations.’’
The Attorney General said that “most of the culprits violated the stay at home order, failed to wear facemasks and violated other traffic laws,” adding that ‘’over N1 million was realised as fines from Monday to Tuesday.’’
According to Aisha Dikko, some offenders were merely warned by the courts and others were given community service to perform for their infractions.
It will be recalled that Kaduna state had set up mobile courts on April 24 to summarily try curfew violators, in its efforts to preserve public safety, following the State Executive Council’s directive.
Earlier, the Deputy Governor of Kaduna State, Dr Hadiza Balarabe, had imposed a lockdown on the state on March 26, by invoking the 1999 Constitution, sections 2 and 8 of the Quarantine Act of 1926 and Kaduna State Public Health Law of 1917.
Giving a breakdown of the offenders, Aisha Dikko said that “Tuesday had the highest number of convictions with 208 offenders, adding that Gabasawa topped the list with 36 convictions while Mararaban Rido had the least number with 10.”