Judge Rejects Govt.'s Plea To Vacate Order on Abacha's Loot
From Saxone Akhaine, Kaduna
A bid by the Federal Government to make a judge order a stay of action of his own judgement failed yesterday at the Federal high Court, Kaduna.
Justice Abdullahi Liman, who said there were no convincing arguments by the government counsel to warrant a review of his judgement that the foreign accounts of the late head of state, Gen. Sani Abacha should not be frozen, reinstated the ruling.
The government has already appealed against the judgement at the Court of Appeal, Kaduna.
The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice Chief Charles Akinlolu Olujimi (SAN) has faulted Liman's verdict. He accused him of giving his judgement without informing the government.
There are also speculations that the government may report Justice Liman to the National Judicial Council (NJC) over his alleged indiscretion.
When the case came up for ruling yesterday, the judge said the government's lawyers did not through their application show why the court should stay execution on the judgement.
Justice Liman accused the government's counsel of incompetence in handling the case against Abacha. He said: "It must first be borne in mind that the context of this order is that the amounts involved in the request for transfer is in the custody of the banks of these countries abroad. And there is no contention that if the defendant/applicant is not allowed to transfer these monies to its custody the monies will disappear.
"It seems for as long as these proceedings continue in the courts, the amount will not only remain in the banks but may probably yield interest and this ehanced amount may become due to the defendant offer of appeal or after complying with the due process as stipulated in the judgement of this court," he said.
Citing Government of Oyo State vs Akinyemi (supra and Vaswani vs Saralakh) Justice Liman argued that "these present the correct pricing of law relating to the grounds on which a stay of proceeding can be granted and one fundamental issue in this case is the destructibility of the res but it seems counsel for the applicant prevaricated so much on that all important ground; counsel failed to show how the 'res' will be destroyed."
Liman further said the government's "allegation about the Abacha illegal organisation using the judgement to perpetuate their fraudulent activities was not only puerile but a sardonic approach to an important legal issue which required a careful approach."
Said he: "I think counsel (to te government) with respect was careless in his approach to this case. The defendant needed to establish a good ground to enable me exercise my discretion to grant a stay; for now they have failed and the application is bound to fail and it is accordingly dismissed." He awarded a N5,000 cost against the government.
The lead Counsel to the Abacha family, Mr. Abdullahi Haruna yesterday drew the attention of the judge to reports that he was being blackmailed by government with a threat to arraign him before the NJC.
In his response, Liman said: "We shall all meet there before the council."
In a statement, lawyers to the Abacha's claimed that "the Attorney -General of the Federation on April 20, 2004 when the matter came up for hearing, requested the court through his counsel U.A. Alilonu to grant an adjournment so that he would personally handle the matter."
Based on the application, the case was adjourned to May 27, 2004.
On that day, neither the Attorney-General nor any counsel from his chamber was in court, the statement signed by Mr. Reuben Atabo alleged.
It said in spite of the series of adjournments to enable government enter a defence in the case, it did not act.
He said: "The record of the court is there for the public to see."
