The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL) has described the quashing of the conviction of Chief Bode George, a chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party as a slap on the integrity of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
A panel of judges at the Supreme Court of Nigeria today, has quashed the conviction handed Chief George, who was jailed for corruption by a Lagos High Court.
The court discharged and acquitted the chief claiming that the prosecutors at the EFCC had no evidence that Chief George had intention to commit fraud at the Nigeria Port Authority when he was the Chairman of the NPA board. He was arraigned on charges of conspiracy, disobedience to lawful order, alleged inflation of contracts and contracts splitting and sentenced to a twenty eight-year jail term without an option of fine.
Speaking on the judgment, the Coalition through its Executive Chairman, Debo Adeniran averred that the case may become that of Ibori and Marcel Awokulehin.
“We only hope that no stone was left unturned; though we cannot claim to know more than the court, we just want to remind the judiciary- which should be the last hope of the common man- of a situation where the man (Chief Bode George) could have committed the offences he was earlier convicted of. The case of James Onanefe Ibori and Justice Marcel Awokulehin cannot be forgotten in a jiffy in this country. This is a case that was thrown out by Awokulehin in a Nigerian court, only for Ibori to later plead guilty to the same offences in a London Court on which he is currently serving jail term. The Apex Court should know that if it is discovered that the Chief did commit those offences, it would mean that those who sat in judgment could have been found to have helped Mr. George to be a free man,” Adeniran stated.
The anti-corruption crusader noted that the EFCC is losing grip on its anti-corruption cases and urged the commission to always provide water-tight evidence to prosecute its cases.
He said, “Now that the conviction has been quashed, it is left for the management of the Nigeria Ports Authority and the EFCC to prove if actually N100bn got missing. Our Coalition will study the content of the judgment to see if the EFCC has told a lie. It is however unfortunate that the Commission is fast losing grips on its anti-corruption cases going by the way many of them are being thrown out of court. It is also important that the Commission provides water-tight evidence in prosecuting its cases”.
