A Magistrate Court in Zuba on the outskirts of Abuja has dismissed the case of assault against Senator Elisha Abbo.
Abbo, the lawmaker representing Adamawa-North, was seen assaulting a woman named Osimibibra Warmate in a viral video. Afterwards, the Nigeria Police Force instituted a case of assault against him.
The assault caused outrage after the video went viral and the lawmaker apologized to his victim in a televised press conference.
A Magistrate Court has now dismissed the suit for lack of diligent prosecution by the police.
The Magistrate, Abdullahi Ilelah, who upheld a no-case submission filed by Senator Abbo, said the police failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the lawmaker indeed assaulted Osimibibra Warmate on May 11, 2019.
This is despite a video recording showing the assault play out and another video showing him apologize to his victim.
During the trial, two witnesses testified against Senator Abbo and they are Warmate who was the nominal complainant and a police officer, ASP Mary Daniel, who investigated the matter.
In her testimony, Warmate said she had gone to visit a friend, Kemi at Pleasure Chest S-x T– S–p, Banex Plaza, Wuse 2, Abuja on May 11, 2019, when the lawmaker walked in with three women.
She said one of the women that accompanied Abbo started vomiting and later fainted.
Warmate said when she left the shop, she received a frantic call from the owner of the shop asking her to come to her aid as the lawmaker had accused her of fouling the shop’s air conditioning system that caused one of his female companions to vomit and was threatening to get her arrested.
The victim said when she returned to the shop and was cleaning up the vomit, two men – one of them a policeman in uniform – barged into the shop and assaulted them on the orders of Senator Elisha Abbo.
The court had on July 8, 2020, granted bail to Senator Abbo in the sum of N5million and the sureties must have verifiable addresses within the Federal Capital Territory.
The Senator representing Adamawa North Senatorial District was granted bail by a Senior Magistrate Abdullahi Ilellah.
This was after the lawmaker was arraigned by the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) police at Zuba Magistrate Court, Abuja.
