A Federal High Court judge, Justice T.G.\u00a0Ringim, sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos this Monday,\u00a0adjourned to October 7,\u00a02021\u00a0to hear a motion\u00a0filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC,\u00a0seeking the final forfeiture of the $5.78million and N2.4billion linked to a former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan.\u00a0
The\u00a0EFCC had filed an application for\u00a0the\u00a0forfeiture\u00a0of the sums of money\u00a0warehoused in Skye Bank Plc and Ecobank Plc,\u00a0respectively in 2017 before Justice Mojisola Olatoregun.
Following\u00a0an\u00a0ex-parte\u00a0application by the EFCC,\u00a0Justice Olatoregun\u00a0had,\u00a0on April 26, 2017, ordered the temporary forfeiture of the money.
Dissatisfied with the order of the trial court, Jonathan alongside other respondents,\u00a0LA Wari Furniture and Bathes, had first approached the Court of Appeal and subsequently the Supreme Court to set asise the order of the lower court.
However, both the appellate court and the apex court affirmed the order of Justice Olatoregun.
Midway into\u00a0the conclusion of hearing on the\u00a0motion for the\u00a0final forfeiture\u00a0of the said sums, Justice Olatoregun retired from the Bench in 2019.
Consequently, the\u00a0Chief Judge of the\u00a0Federal High court re-assigned\u00a0the matter to Justice Chuka Obiozor for hearing.\u00a0
Justice Obiozor,\u00a0however,\u00a0could not hear the case before his transfer to the\u00a0Federal High Court, Benin , Edo State.
At the resumed hearing of the matter\u00a0today, the EFCC counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, narrated to Justice Ringim how far the matter had gone.\u00a0
\u00a0Oyedepo said:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThis matter is a non-conviction suit instituted before your learned brother, Justice Olatoregun now retired, where we prayed for the final forfeiture of the sum of $5,781,173.55, warehoused in Skye Bank Plc and N2,421,953,502.78, property of LA Wari Furniture and Bathes in Ecobank Plc.
\u201cIt was instituted and an interim order was granted on April 24, 2017, upon which it went up to Supreme Court and an application for its final forfeiture was moved. But the trial judge didn\u2019t deliver the judgment before retiring.\u00a0
\u201cIt was upon that fact that the file was transferred to the registry,\u00a0where it was re-assigned to the former judge and subsequently your Lordship.\u201d
Counsel to Patience Jonathan, Ifedayo Adedipe,\u00a0SAN,\u00a0and\u00a0Gboyega Oyewole,\u00a0SAN, also informed the judge that the case was adjourned for mention because it was coming up for the first time before him.\u00a0
Counsel to the companies, Mike Ozekhome,\u00a0SAN,\u00a0therefore,\u00a0urged the court to adjourn the case on the premise that it was starting afresh and that he intended to file an application challenging the constitutionality of the entire proceedings.
He prayed the court for a long adjournment to enable him file the said application.\u00a0 \u00a0
In his response, Oyedepo opposed the application and prayed the court not to grant same, because, according to him, there is a procedure enshrined in\u00a0Section 17 of the Advanced Fee Fraud and\u00a0Other\u00a0Related\u00a0Offences Act, which the EFCC had complied with except the last step,\u00a0which is a motion for final forfeiture.\u00a0
Oyedepo, therefore,\u00a0invited the judge to look at the proceedings of February 17, 2021,\u00a0where the former judge adjourned hearing of the motion for final forfeiture till April 13, which could not be held because of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) strike.\u00a0
He also prayed that should the court be inclined to grant an adjournment, it should be for the motion of final forfeiture.\u00a0
In a bench ruling, Justice Ringim held that proceedings\u00a0of this nature is a special one and cannot be truncated by any application.\u00a0
He said: “In my humble opinion, there is a procedure to follow in this type of application,\u00a0which cannot be truncated.
“The court cannot adjourn the matter because of an application,\u00a0which is yet to be filed.
\u201cHowever, due to the nature of the application,\u00a0as hinted by the second respondent, the court will not shut the application out.\u00a0
“This court will adjourn for the hearing of the motion for final forfeiture that is pending.\u00a0
“Consequently, the second respondent is,\u00a0hereby,\u00a0ordered to file the application,\u00a0if any, within 14 days from today,\u00a0and the plaintiff will have one week to respond.
\u201cIt will be heard alongside the motion for final forfeiture.”\u00a0
Justice Ringim further adjourned the proceedings to October 7, 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Federal High Court judge, Justice T.G.\u00a0Ringim, sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos this Monday,\u00a0adjourned to October 7,\u00a02021\u00a0to hear a motion\u00a0filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC,\u00a0seeking the final forfeiture of the $5.78million and N2.4billion linked to a former First Lady, Dame Patience Jonathan.\u00a0 The\u00a0EFCC had filed an application for\u00a0the\u00a0forfeiture\u00a0of the sums of money\u00a0warehoused in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":14946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3602,324,147],"class_list":["post-34288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-4m-2","tag-forfeiture","tag-jonathan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34288","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=34288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}