{"id":16576,"date":"2019-04-03T20:54:45","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T20:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=16576"},"modified":"2019-04-03T20:54:45","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T20:54:45","slug":"onnoghen-in-surprise-closure-of-defense-at-cct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=16576","title":{"rendered":"Onnoghen in surprise closure of defense at CCT"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Justice Onnoghen Closes Case at CCT<br \/>\nThe suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen has rested his case in his ongoing trial on charges of false and non-declaration of assets.<br \/>\nThe development came as a surprise as the defendant, whose lawyer, Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN), had indicated on Monday that the defence would be calling \u201ctwo or three witnesses,\u201d only one of whom had testified at the previous Monday\u2019s proceedings.<br \/>\nIn addition, the defence had, on Monday, applied for and caused the Danladi Umar-led CCT to issue a subpoena to be served on an officer of the Code of Conduct Bureau, Mrs. Theresa Nwafor, to appear on Wednesday to testify as the second defence witness.<br \/>\nIt was not clear if Nwafor was present at the tribunal when Onnoghen\u2019s lead defence counsel for the Wednesday\u2019s proceedings, Chris Uche (SAN), rose to announce the closure of the defendant\u2019s case.<br \/>\nUche made no mention of Nwafor or any other proposed defence witness.<br \/>\nHe said, \u201cMy lords, today is for continuation of trial. But my lords, after a deep review of the evidence led by the prosecution and the defence, the defence has come to conclusion and we have closed our case.<br \/>\n\u201cPursuant to paragraph 14 of the Practice Direction of this honourable tribunal, we apply to file our final written addresses.\u201d<br \/>\nHe asked for 14 days to file the final written address.<br \/>\nThe prosecuting counsel, Aliyu Umar (SAN), said Uche had given him prior indication to close the defence\u2019s case on Wednesday. He urged the tribunal to use its discretion to allot time for the filing of final addresses by the parties.<br \/>\nThe next stage in the trial would be for parties to exchange their final addresses and return to the tribunal on a date to adopt the court papers.<br \/>\nThe date for judgment would be fixed after the adoption of the final addresses.<br \/>\nThe prosecution had earlier closed its case with three witnesses.<br \/>\nBy <strong>PRNigeria<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Justice Onnoghen Closes Case at CCT The suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen has rested his case in his ongoing trial on charges of false and non-declaration of assets. The development came as a surprise as the defendant, whose lawyer, Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN), had indicated on Monday that the defence would be calling [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":15051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}