The Special Offences Division of the Lagos High Court sitting in Ikeja has refused to grant the fresh bail application filed by businessman, Fred Ajudua.
Through his counsel, Olalekan Ojo (SAN), Ajudua had asked Justice Mojisola Dada to admit him to bail pending the determination of his trial.
The counsel also told the court that his client, who was assisted to court by some medical personnel from the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), has a chronic kidney disease.
Ojo urged the court to grant his client bail to enable him to attend to his health challenges, noting that only the living can face trial.
However, counsel to the EFCC, Seidu Atteh, raised objections to the request for bail. Atteh submitted that the defendant was already before the Supreme Court seeking certain reliefs, and he should have directed his application to that court. He urged the trial court to refuse bail.
In his counter arguments, Ojo insisted that his client was not before the Supreme Court to seek bail, and there was no nexus between the application seeking to set aside the May 9 judgment of the Supreme Court and the instant application for bail.
In her ruling on the issue, Justice Dada held that she was inclined to await the outcome of the decision of the Supreme Court and to abide by the same.
The judge said, “In view of the applications filed at the Supreme Court, I am constrained to make any decision with respect to this instant application filed by the defence counsel. I will abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court.”
The Court subsequently adjourned to October 10, 31 and November 20 for continuation of the trial.
Ajudua is standing trial for allegedly defrauding a Palestinian national, Zad Abu Zalaf, of the sum of $1,043,000 (One Million, Forty-Three Thousand U.S. Dollars) under false pretences.
Before deciding on bail, the court listened to the testimony of the third prosecution witness, an investigator with the EFCC, Afanda Bashir Emmanuel.
The witness told the court that he met Ajudua in 2005, shortly after the establishment of the EFCC, and the defendant’s case file was handed over by the Special Fraud Unit (SFU) of the Nigerian Police Force (NPF) to the Advance Fee Fraud Section of the Commission, where he worked.
He also testified that in the course of the investigation, the Commission had cause to write to the NPF, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and the forensic lab of the EFCC to seek some documents in the investigation.
The defence counsel rejected a move by the EFCC to tender the documents in question as evidence. The counsel argued that the documents were not admissible as they were not original documents nor certified true copies of the public documents. The counsel also argued that the EFCC counsel was not the maker of the document and had laid no foundation for the photocopies tendered.
After counter arguments by the EFCC counsel, Justice Dada in her ruling, rejected two of the documents and admitted another two in evidence as exhibits.
The court subsequently adjourned to allow the defendant’s counsel to prepare to cross-examine the witness.
The case, which began in 2005 before Justice Morenike Obadina of the Lagos State High Court, Ikeja, encountered several delays owing to what many had described as legal technicalities employed at the time by the defendant.
The matter was reassigned to Justice Josephine Oyefeso and later to Justice Mojisola Dada, before Ajudua was finally arraigned on June 4, 2018.
Following the denial of his bail by Justice Dada, Ajudua appealed to the Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal, which granted him bail on September 10, 2018. Dissatisfied with the appellate court’s ruling, the EFCC appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Commission also filed a separate appeal challenging the appellate court’s decision to transfer the case from Justice Dada to another judge to commence afresh (de novo).
Both issues were resolved in favour of the EFCC by the Supreme Court, which ordered Justice Dada to continue the trial of the case.
