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Saraki Files Fresh Suit to Stop Trial At CCT

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The Senate President, Senator Bukola Saraki has asked Justice Gabriel Kolawole of a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja to stop his on-going trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal.Saraki is standing trial before the tribunal over alleged false assets declaration.The suit which is an enforcement of fundamental human rights was marked FHC/ABJ/CS/117/2016 and filed by one Timipa Jenkins Okponipere, on behalf of the Senate President.The lawyer is seeking the court’s declaration that “the plan to resume the trial of Senator Abubakar Saraki at the CCT is a breach of his fundamental right to fair hearing as guaranteed by Section 36(1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).He is also praying for an order compelling the CCT and AGF to suspend indefinitely, any plan to resume the trial at the CCT.Among the grounds relied on by the applicant, include that the trial at CCT was commenced at the wrong time; four years after Saraki allegedly committed the offences.According to him, “Having regard to the aims and objectives of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and its functions in sections 2 and 3 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal (CCBT) Act, Senator Saraki ought to have been prosecuted by the respondents long before he returned to public life again in 2015 as an elected Senator.”Indeed, the CCBT Act never contemplated that an incumbent public office holder was already corrupt before he attained public office, otherwise, people like Senator Saraki, who had a case to answer regarding his activities between 2003 and 2011 would not have been permitted to return to public life.”However, four years later in 2015 Senator Saraki not only returned to public life as a Senator, he went on to become the President of the Senate, Chairman of the National Assembly and Nigeria’s number three citizen”It is nobody’s fault that the 1st and 2nd respondents were not vigilant enough to stop or prevent Senator Sarki from attaining public office. If truly the respondents were proactive institutions of government, they ought to have prosecuted Senator Sarki immediately after he left office as Governor of Kwara State in 2011, but they never did.”The failure, refusal and/or negligence of the respondents to prosecute Senator Saraki for the offences he allegedly committed between 2003 and 2011 before he returned again to public life as a Senator, vitiated all his past alleged misdeeds such that, as of June 8, 2015 when he was inaugurated as a Senator, he was assumed to be a public office holder without blemish in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the respondents, otherwise they would have long since initiated proceedings against him.”The subsequent attempt to put Senator Saraki on trial over offences allegedly committed between 2003 and 2011 are not only tainted with political mischief and desperation, they constitute a breach of his fundamental right to fair hearing”.Responding to the suit, the AGF, in a notice of preliminary objection, faulted the suit and urged the court to dismiss it for lacking in merit.The AGF noted that the subject matter of the suit did not fall within the provisions of chapter four of the Constitution, containing the guaranteed fundamental human rights. The case has been adjourned to November 16, 2016.

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The British Left Two Devils Behind When They Left Nigeria -Bode George

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“I have said it before, there are two devils left behind when the British left Nigeria. The first was tribalism. They planted it as a devil and the second is Religious bigotry. What has these issues got to do with managing people.

“Nobody selected himself that I want to be Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa man. No. You just popped out and whether you are a Muslim or Christian is irrelevant.

“In all religions that I know, you are told to love your Neighbor as yourself. What you will not accept, don’t do it to another neighbor because if you pack up and die, that’s the end. Let us have an impact of governance.” -Chief Bode George On AriseTV News

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After years of evading arrest, NDLEA nabs most wanted Lagos drug baron, Temo

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After many years of wearing the toga of invincibility, the overall head of the Mushin, Lagos drug cartel, 57-year-old Alhaji Sulaiman Jimoh (alias Olowoidiogede, populary known as Temo), has been arrested by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, at his enclave after an initial resistance from him and his horde of hoodlums.

In the last two years, the NDLEA had intercepted large consignments of illicit drugs worth billions of naira owned by Temo but he has remained largely evasive while a few encounters with him and his armed gangs in his Mushin enclave had resulted in gunfight.

Some of the recent seizures of his shipments include: a 14, 524.8 kilograms of Ghana Loud, a strong strain of cannabis sativa, smuggled into Lagos from Ghana in two trucks and a J5 bus intercepted at Ojuelegba area of Lagos in the early hours of Sunday 28th January 2024; two truck-loads of the same substance weighing 8,852kg intercepted at Eleko beach, Lekki Lagos on 4th May 2023 and 252kg of Loud seized from his enclave in Mushin on Wednesday 26th July 2023. Indeed, in the last two encounters, his men engaged NDLEA operatives in gunfight.

The drug kingpin was very notorious for always being on the move to evade arrest but with persistence and determination of the Agency aided by modern tools and intelligence, the concerted effort to get him paid off at 10am on Monday 22nd July 2024 when NDLEA’s surveillance teams on his trail tracked and pinned him down at Igbarere street, Mushin. A reinforcement of about 50 operatives was immediately mobilized to the area while he was attempting to escape in a Mercedes Benz SUV GLE 350 marked 01G-300G. His attempt to escape by mobilizing hoodlums to engage and distract the operatives however failed after which he was overpowered and whisked away from the chaotic scene while his men surrendered to the superior firepower of the anti-narcotic agents who also succeeded in recovering the Mercedes Benz SUV the suspect was found in.

In his reaction to the arrest of Temo, Chairman/Chief Executive Officer of NDLEA, Brig. Gen. Mohamed Buba Marwa (Rtd) commen

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Peter Obi Writes Onanuga, Demands Apology, N5bn within 72 Hours

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The Presidential Candidate of our Labour Party in the 2023 general elections, Peter Obi has demanded from the Special Adviser on Communication and Strategy to the President, Mr. Bayo Onanuga, the retraction of his wild allegation, linking him as behind the planned mass protest being planned for August.

Obi, writing through his counsel, Chief Alex Ejesieme, SAN of the MADIBA Chambers, said that the allegation which was widely published in social and mainstream media and read by many within and outside the country maligned his hard-earned reputation as a man who indulges in violence when all his antecedents are vivid that he abhors violence even in the face of extreme provocation.

“It’s our client’s conviction that the publication was a calculated plot to demean, ridicule, humiliate and embarrass him by the estimation of every right thinking member of the society”

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