The Office of the Attorney General of the Federation\u00a0 and Minister of Justice on Friday announced\u00a0 it had\u00a0 taken over the prosecution of the former Gombe State Governor, Danjuma Goje, for N5bn\u00a0 money laundering\u00a0 case\u00a0 from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
\nThe development came less than 24 hours after Goje\u00a0 withdrew from the Senate presidency race in support of Senator Ahmed Lawan.
\nLawan has been endorsed by the ruling\u00a0 All Peoples Congress\u00a0 for the role in the 9th National Assembly.
\nGoje and two others have been on trial\u00a0 for some\u00a0 years at\u00a0 the Jos Federal High Court\u00a0\u00a0 for money laundering charges brought against them by the EFCC.
\nThe anti-corruption agency specifically\u00a0 accused the lawmaker of forging a resolution of the\u00a0 state\u00a0 House of Assembly to collect a N5bn loan from Access Bank while he was governor between 2003 and 2011.
\nThe\u00a0 EFCC\u00a0 claimed\u00a0 Goje, between September and November 2010, forged a document titled, \u2018Resolution authorising His Excellency, the Executive Governor of Gombe State to acquire a loan of N5,000,000,000.00 only\u2019, with Ref. No: GM\/HA\/RES\/VOL. 1\/17.
\nThat resolution was alleged to have been signed by Shehu Atiku, Clerk of the Gombe State House of Assembly, with the intent that it be acted upon\u00a0 as a genuine document by Access Bank,\u00a0 leading to a N5bn-facility being obtained from the bank by the Goje administration \u201cfor infrastructural projects\u201d.
\nEFCC said its investigations revealed that the purported resolution authorising the loan was forged, pointing out that the approval did not pass through the right processes.
\nDuring the trial, one of the accused, Mr Sabo Tumu, died, forcing\u00a0 the court to strike his name\u00a0 out of\u00a0\u00a0 the case.
\nThe EFCC through its counsel, Wahab Shittu, closed its case against the defendants on May 31, 2018 after calling 24 witnesses and tendering several documents to prove its case.
\nBut counsel for Goje, Chris Uche (SAN), on September 14, 2018 filed a \u201cno-case\u201d submission while the prosecution counsel urged the court to dismiss same.
\nThe court had\u00a0 earlier retained two charges preferred against the Senator after dismissing 19 others.
\nBut the EFCC rejected the judgement delivered by Justice Babatunde Quadri of the\u00a0 Jos Federal High Court II, dismissing the 19 charges against Goje and approached the\u00a0 Court of Appeal in Jos to overrule the judge.
\nThe appellate court has yet to fix a date for the hearing of the appeal.
\nWhen the case came up for an emergency hearing before Justice Quadri, Shittu, said the EFCC was withdrawing from the case and handing it over to the office of the AGF for continuation.
\nLawyer for the ex-governor, Paul Erokoro (SAN), did not object to\u00a0 EFCC\u2019s withdrawal and handing over of the case to the AGF\u2019s office.
\nBy The PUNCH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Office of the Attorney General of the Federation\u00a0 and Minister of Justice on Friday announced\u00a0 it had\u00a0 taken over the prosecution of the former Gombe State Governor, Danjuma Goje, for N5bn\u00a0 money laundering\u00a0 case\u00a0 from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. The development came less than 24 hours after Goje\u00a0 withdrew from the Senate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18615","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\/18615","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=18615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18615\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}