Bode George to know fate December 13

The Supreme Court will on December 31, 2013, deliver judgment in an appeal filed by a leader of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Bode George, to set aside his conviction by a Lagos State High Court in 2009.

A panel of the apex court set the date on Thursday after hearing the appeal, in which George and five others asked it to set aside their conviction and the sentence of two years imprisonment imposed on them by the Lagos State High Court.

George, the Chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority between 2001 and 2003, was tried and convicted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission alongside former directors of the NPA, including Alhaji Aminu Dabo, Captain Oluwasegun Abidoye, Alhaji Abdulahi Aminu Tafida, Alhaji Zanna Maidaribe and Mr. Sule Aliyu, over offences bordering on corruption, inflation of contracts and contracts splitting.

The Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction and sentence, ruling that George and the others were properly charged and convicted under the relevant laws of Lagos State.

Though, they have already served the sentence imposed on them by the court, George and the others have approached the Supreme Court with an appeal to challenge their conviction.

At the hearing in the appeal on Thursday, counsel to George and the other appellants, Kanu Agabi, SAN, and Joseph Daudu, SAN, insisted that their clients were wrongfully convicted and sentenced.

They argued that the Lagos State High Court lacked the jurisdiction to try their clients.

According to them, their clients should have been tried by a Federal High Court, instead of the Lagos High Court.

“The Lagos State High Court has no jurisdiction over the offences, the appropriate court to have gone to would have been the FHC, the NPA being an institution created by a statute of the National Assembly.

“I urge your lordships to hold that the trial should have been before a FHC, that having not done so, the entire proceeding is a nullity,” Daudu said.

The appellants’ counsel further argued that, even if the Lagos State High Court had the jurisdiction to try the offences, the prosecution did not prove its claim that their clients were guilty of contracts splitting.

They equally argued that the trial court erred in upholding the prosecution’s allegation that their clients were guilty of disobedience of a lawful order, which they described as an “anachronistic offence.”

 “It is a complete no trial – I urge your lordships to hold that, apart from the fact that the Court of Appeal did not consider the issue of constitutionality, the entire trial was a breach of the Nigerian constitution.

“The nature of the disobedience of a lawful order must be criminalised by the National Assembly.

“If the main offences were not proved, there is no way conspiracy could have been proved,” Daudu added.

In the same vein, Agabi noted that the prosecution had to dismiss the evidence of some of its witnesses, which absolved the accused persons of contracts splitting.

At the end of the argument, the Supreme Court panel, headed by Justice Tanko Mohammed, adjourned to December 13, 2013, to deliver judgment.