Ex-Lagos speaker, Ikuforiji, takes N600m fraud case to S’Court

A former Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mr. Adeyemi Ikuforiji, and his ex-aide, Mr. Oyebode Atoyebi, have approached the Supreme Court to challenge the judgment of the Court of Appeal that ordered their retrial for an alleged N600m fraud.
Justice Ibrahim Buba of a Federal High Court in Lagos had in a September 2014 ruling set Ikuforiji and Atoyebi free of the 56 charges filed against them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
But the ruling was reversed penultimate week by a three-man appellate court panel, comprising Justices Biobela Georgewill, Side Bage and Ugochukwu Ogakwu.
The panel, after setting Justice Buba’s ruling aside, ordered the return of the case file to the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court for re-assignment to another judge where Ikuforiji and Atoyebi would be subjected to a fresh trial.
However, not pleased with the decision of the Court of Appeal, Ikuforiji and Atoyebi have, through their lawyer, Mr. Abiodun Onidare, proceeded to the Supreme Court to challenge the appellate court’s verdict.
While describing the judgment of the Court of Appeal that ordered their retrial as unreasonable, unwarranted and baseless in law, Ikuforiji and Atoyebi begged the Supreme Court to uphold the decision of Justice Buba, who had earlier set them free.
The EFCC had in its appeal to the Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal contended that Justice Buba erred in law when he pronounced that the charges against Ikuforiji and Atoyebi were incompetent because they were brought under the Money Laundering Act, 2004, said to have been repealed by the Money Laundering Act, 2011.
The EFCC prosecutor, Chief Godwin Obla (SAN), had in one of the 10 grounds of the appeal contended that the lower court was wrong to have concluded that Section 1 of the MLA applied only to natural persons and corporate bodies and not to government entities like the office of the Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly.
Obla had maintained that government entities were not excluded from the provision of the MLA that cash payments should not be made above the stipulated threshold.

SOURCE.. PUNCH