A former Governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, has rejected the transfer of his trial from Justice Adeniyi Ademola of a Federal High Court in Abuja to another judge of the Abuja Division of the court, Justice B.O Quadri, Punch reports.
Lamido and seven others including five firms, are being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC on 27 counts of abuse of office and money laundering involving about N1.3bn, offences which were alleged committed while the ex-governor was in office.
Justice Ademola was handling the case up till October last year when the National Judicial Council directed him and other judges accused of corruption to stop sitting pending the cases against them would be determined.
But following the decision of the NJC directing the judges whom allegations of corruption were levelled against last year, the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Ibrahim Auta, re-assigned many of the cases being handled by Justice Ademola. Lamido’s trial, which was one of Justice Ademola’s cases, was re-assigned to Justice Quadri.
Meanwhile, Justice Ademola, his wife, Olubowale, and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Joe Agi (SAN), who happened to be Lamido’s lawyer, were on April 5, 2017 jointly exonerated of the charges preferred against them.
Agi, with whom Justice Ademola and the judge’s wife, were jointly prosecuted but later exonerated by court, on Wednesday filed on behalf of Lamido, the motion seeking the return of his client’s case file to Justice Ademola.
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