Solomon Akuma, the father of Emmanuel Akuma, a pharmacist, who has reportedly been detained by the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) in Abuja for about nine months, has narrated to PREMIUM TIMES how the police ‘deceived’ him to get his son arrested.
The father, who is a senior pastor at the Truevine Evangelical Mission based in Delta State, said 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.
The 29 years old Emmanuel was arrested for tweeting 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, who later died of complications attributable to COVID-19 later in the year.
The tweet was in response to a Twitter post asking respondents what their next move would be if they got $1 million.
The father said he thereafter received a call from a person ”who disguised to be a person seeking to reward him for praying for him in the past.”
“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,” he said.
The cleric added, “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.
“They said I should not bother that they knew me as a pastor. I said, okay, no problem. They said I had once ministered in their church.
