After being detained for almost four years, a teenager from Lagos who was remanded in custody in 2022 after allegedly being arrested for wearing slippers similar to those worn by a complainant has been freed.

The adolescent, whose identity was kept secret, was one of two men whose cases were taken up by Citizens Gavel, a non-governmental organization, after its legal team came across them in January 2024 while visiting the Medium Security Correctional Center.

The teenager was arrested for wearing slippers that resembled the complainant's, but despite being detained for months, he had never appeared in court.

The court stated that its intervention to follow the case was prompted by the discovery.

“Their ordeal came to our attention in January 2024 during a visit to the Medium Security Correctional Centre, where our legal team in Lagos interviewed them and discovered that, despite having been arrested since 2022, they had never been taken to court.”

“Immediately, our legal team took up their cases and began tracking the matter at the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, eventually tracing the case to the court of Justice Coker,” the post partly read.

According to Citizens Gavel, it first appeared in the case in March 2024 and then made over seven trial appearances before Justice Coker.

The group added that the prosecution had not produced a single witness in spite of multiple adjournments.

“From then on, we continued appearing before Justice Coker on more than seven occasions for trial and filed several applications urging the court to strike out the case despite all the adjournments and the prosecution failing to produce a single witness,” it said.