By Emma Amaize

WARRI—EDO Youth Congress, EYC, has alleged that a Warri-based lawyer,  Mr. Casely Omon-Irabor, arraigned in court, last month, by the police in Delta State for allegedly offering N700,000 bribe to a police officer to let go a kidnap suspect, was a set up.

The group, in a letter to the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Mohammed Abubakar, by its President, Mr. Dan Eichie, alleged that the state Commissioner of Police was on a vendetta mission against the lawyer.

Delta State Commissioner of Police, who reacted to the claim, yesterday, described same as a fallacy, saying, “How can anybody, including Omon-Irabor himself, say that he was framed?”

EYC, however, allegeded that there was a sharp disagreement between the commissioner and Omon-Irabor, which resulted in a shouting match at a meeting in the presence of Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan in August 2012, adding that the commissioner denied the lawyer entry to his office, when he went to apologise to him the next day.

The state Police CP, on his part, told Vanguard that at a stakeholders’ meeting convened by the governor, last year, to proffer solution to the upsurge of kidnapping in the state, Omon-Irabor claimed he knew 60 per cent of kidnappers, but would not assist the police because police officers were part of the problem.

The commissioner said he took up the lawyer at the forum, arguing that the claim that there was a crack in the force, just like there was in the legal profession and other professions, did not mean that citizens should not help the police to combat kidnapping and other crimes. He said he rebutted the lawyer’s claims openly and the matter ended there, adding that Omon-Irabor, afterward, tabled issues that were handled by the police, and so, there was no justification to say the that police framed him.