Some events remain evergreen in your mind. Despite the passage of 15 years, it has remained etched on my memory. The crudely forged case against the former governor of Delta State, Chief James Onanefe Ibori, had been stalled in an Abuja High Court while the Police was being waited for to bring its first report on the Ibori case to court. Though over a month went by and the then Police Chief, Mr. Tafa Balogun, played hide and seek, no single Nigerian newspaper or magazine columnist took umbrage at Tafa’s undemocratic antics simply because the man being affected by the unbecoming display of that nastiness against the concept of democracy and the rule of law was, well, Ibori … and the press had taken sides with the central administration against him.
Of course, if the President Muhammadu Buhari administration were to be so recalcitrant today in disobeying a court order, the media would call for the Inspector-General of Police to resign or be sacked by the President.
Back to the matter proper. That Monday’s proceedings opened dramatically enough. The judge entered the court at 9am and called for the Chief Registrar of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, Mrs. Aisha Abubakar Ibrahim. Ah, did the name ring a bell? Yes, she was the same former minister known widely as Mama Taraba. And she died a few days ago.
As she brought the documents and stepped into the witness box, the late Chief Gani Fawehinmi objected, saying that Yusuf had not concluded the evidence he began last Wednesday. “It is not proper to be taking witnesses in between trial. This is a trial within a trial,” he said. At this point, Ibori’s counsel, the late Paul Milton Ohwovoriole, interjected that the Chief Registrar was only a government official coming to tender documents and she had nothing to do with the case. “The books are part of the evidence; if the documents are put in evidence, they could either be accepted or rejected,” he added.
That was the beginning of the favourable tide that remained with Ibori all through the proceedings in that court. The Registrar, while answering Ibori’s lawyer’s questions, announced that this “is the court record books of Upper Area Court, Bwari, in custody of the Registrar of the Court in Bwari before I called for them”. She said also that the Criminal Complaint book of the Bwari court had remained with her, too. The court record is where proceedings of a court are recorded while the criminal complaint book is for recording the charges and the parties involved in particular cases.
“When did the two documents get into your custody,” Fawehinmi asked the lady Registrar.
Her reply: “There was a time Election Petition Tribunal subpoenaed the FCT Chief Judge to produce the two documents, 15 March, 2004” for a matter then pending before the election tribunal.
When Fawehinmi asked whether the documents were “authentic”, the Chief Registrar said that “since I got them from the courts and they are court documents, they remain authentic. If some parts were removed, I will not call the documents unauthentic because they remain court records but I will say that the authentic documents were tampered with. If there was any removal it was before the documents came into my possession”.
Fawehinmi insisted on knowing when the Registrar collected the documents, but Ibori’s counsel interjected, “There is no need for that. Yusuf (Bwari magistrate) himself has already said that some pages were missing, so why bother the Registrar about that?”
After the Chief Registrar stepped down from the witness box, Ibrahim Yusuf, the Bwari lay judge, resumed his position there. The wiry smile that had played on his lips all along was gone. I wrote in my notebook: “I must check on the import of the Registrar’s testimony, it unsettled Fawehinmi and the Bwari lay judge. Also, any one could see the relief on the faces of Ibori’s counsel”.
The moment the Judge exited the court, Ibori’s supporters began celebratory backslapping and handshakes. Even this early in the proceedings, the matter was headed somewhere that was not antagonistic to Ibori’s chances and unless a major piece of evidence emerged against him, it would take only a miscarriage of justice to get Ibori to lose.
Yet, despite this wind behind Ibori’s back, the following day’s newspapers had, for their headlines, variations of this: “I Convicted Ibori, Says Bwari Judge” but which had no documentary backing. Such too would have been the case with Daily Independent where the Judicial Correspondent had written and so titled his story by 4pm when I called for it. I asked him not to file it despite his prostrations that Lagos had been calling for it. He even asked that I write mine and send separately. I refused and reworked it to accentuate the inconsistencies concerning the FIRs and instead of summarising the proceedings as he did, I gave a blow by blow account in the question and answer form of that contest between Ohwovoriole and Yusuf that was almost totally reproduced above. In a case as sensitive as this, I have always believed that the duty of the journalist would be to help the reader to fully understand the situation by presenting the blow by blow account.
I finished the story by 5:30 pm and asked the Law Correspondent to read through before sending it. In answer to questions from Lagos, Fadeyi rightly said that his story was ready by 4 pm. The Editor, Mr. James Apkandem, phoned me and said that I must never again insist on seeing Fadeyi’s stories before they were sent. My explanation cut no ice with petty office politics-infested Lagos headquarters and that “delay” was marked against me and was invoked at a meeting months later in Lagos, as one of my gross misdeeds meriting the taking away the control of Abuja office from me. Akpandem is still alive, and Ted Iwere was the MD then. I have not lied against them.
Yet, there is something my heart is burning to present: Ohwovoriole’s cross-examination of Yusuf, the Bwari Upper Area Court lay judge, who lied that he jailed Ibori in 1995.
Ohwovoriole: “In the summary trial of CR-81-95, what was the process?”
Yusuf: “We were sitting in open court when the Prosecutor brought six FIRs. The FIR was read by Prosecutor Musa Sunday and the accused was having a counsel, N. Ndukwe. It was read to the accused person and he pleaded guilty. And his counsel, N. Ndukwe (this name has been searched for in the list of registered lawyers in Nigeria, it could not be found) pleaded for leniency since he was a first offender, and I imposed a fine of N500 on each of the two counts.”
Ohwovoriole: “If you try a case, you sign at the end of the proceeding, which you did in this case.”
Yusuf: “Yes.”
Ohwovoriole: “If you see exhibit C, the record of your court, you will be able to recognize it.”
Yusuf: “Yes.”
Ohwovoriole: “Look at pages 439 to 441.”
Looking into the book, Yusuf read: “The CR is 71-95 to 81-95”.
Ibori’s counsel asked him again to look at page 441 where CR 81-95 was registered as Commissioner of Police versus Shuaibu Anyebe, and he asked Yusuf to read out the rest of the record. Yusuf now complied: “CR-81-95 was registered on 28/9/95 as Commissioner of Police versus Shuaibu Anyebe of security, Bwari. Substance of complaints: negligent conduct and criminal breach of trust, under section 312 and 196 of the penal code. Remark: sentenced to one year or N1, 000 fine jointly on each count.
“The next date was 5/10/95 in CR -83-95. The next date again is October 13 with CR -84-95. The prosecutor was Sabo of Kawu. The next is 17/10/95, in CR -85-95, involving Mallam Adamu Muhammed of Lugbe village. Next is 19/10/95, CR-86-95, Barau Ayade versus Dogonyaro Akau, next is 20/10/95, in CR- 87-95, involving Elambu Auta versus Danjuma Medeji and Yerima Akusu. The complaint was enticement.”
Going for the kill, Ibori’s counsel asked: “How many entries are there between CR-78 and CR-82?”
To this, Yusuf mentioned only five cases. And most material to the trial, none of the five bore Ibori’s name. And that was from the official records kept by, and brought from, Yusuf’s own court and read out during the trial by Yusuf himself.
At this, Ohwovoriole, contentment written all over his face, pointedly called Yusuf a liar: “I put it to you that you are a liar. I put it to you that you are a pathological liar, and you and your staff altered CR-87-95 to read CR -81-95 and inserted Ibori’s name.”
Now, dear reader, Yusuf had claimed that “CR-87-95 concerned Ibori. You may recollect that Yusuf claimed that some persons penetrated the records and changed CR-81-95 which he lied had concerned Ibori to read CR-87-95. But he, with his own mouth, read out from the records of the Bwari court where he was a lay judge: “CR-87-95 involving Elambu Auta versus Danjuma Medeji and Yerima Akasu. The complaint was enticement.” So even CR-87-95 concerned somebody else and not Ibori.
While Ohwovoriole cross-examined Yusuf, he could not make a clear distinction between the charge numbers in Anyebe’s case and the one allegedly involving Ibori. Though Awal Yusuf had earlier in his evidence-in-chief said that the charge number of the case against Ibori was CR-81-95, he later changed his words and said it was CR-87-95. Now, Yusuf in reply to Ohwovoriole questions, proved that James Onanefe Ibori’s name never appeared in any of the five First Information Reports (FIR’s) registered in his court on September 28, 1995.
It is likely that if that woman did not have the courage to stand her ground in court and tell the truth, Ibori could have lost that case. The Obasanjo administration had interest in that case, and the Police IG and Abuja Chief Judge joined in the Government Magic that was going on. But she embraced the truth. May this good work help plead her case before the Almighty.
And now on to Lt. Gen T. Y. Danjuma’s Taraba Declaration. When he called on Nigerians to rise up and defend themselves from terrorists, saying that the law enforcement agencies were either unable to defend the populace or were conniving with them, he was roundly condemned by those in government.
Now, self-help agencies, supported by some state governments, have sprouted here and there, even as communities have rallied to provide some modicum of self-support for themselves. A serving minister even chided Nigerians for running at the sound of gunshots instead of fighting back.
Then, last Monday, Niger State governor, Abubakar Bello, cried out in a video: “I am confirming that we have Boko Haram elements in Niger State, around Kaure. They have taken over the territory… They have installed their flag.”
The governor added that the libido-crazed insurgents forcefully took many of the residents as their wives. And as the state shares a boundary with the Federal Capital Territory, there is little wonder that Abuja residents are now panicky and schools have started shutting down. Let those who rose against Danjuma, please, explain what is going on. When does it become obvious to a failure that he has failed? (Independent)
