Daily Independent Online.
*
Tuesday, June 15, 2004.
Bailiffs
arrested over alleged Supreme Court judges’ bribe
By Rotimi Fadeyi,
Senior
Correspondent, Abuja
The N5 billion bribery
allegation made against Chief Justice Muhammadu Uwais and some other justices
of the Supreme Court may have taken another dimension with the reported arrest
of court bailiffs who attempted to serve papers on the justices.
It was learnt that the
two bailiffs had come to the premises of the Supreme Court to serve them on a
suit filed at a Lagos High Court over the allegation.
Senior officials of
the apex court allegedly ordered the arrest of the two when they attempted to
serve the papers on the Chief Registrar, Danlami Senchi.
The two bailiffs, S.
Dawaki and Vincent Ugochukwu, were waiting to sign a record book as evidence
that they served the papers when they were allegedly rounded up by policemen
attached to a police post located on the court premises.
They were said to have
been released after they had spent between five and three days in detention.
When contacted on the
matter, Senchi denied that such an incident happened.
He insisted that he
had not been served with any court papers, saying "it is not true that
court bailiffs were arrested, whoever might have given you that information is
wrong. Nothing liked that happened".
A group known as Derivation Font had accused the judges of
collection N5 billion as bribe in order to give judgement in favour of Delta
State Governor James Ibori in the
suit instituted against him.
