Maina: Court Rules In Favour Of Prosecution On Admissibility Of Evidence

The Federal High Court, Abuja, presided over by Justice Okon Abang, on Tuesday November 26, 2019, ruled in favour of the prosecution on admissibility of the documents, sought to be tendered by prosecution witness in the matter involving Abdulrasheed Abdulahi Maina, former chairman of Pension Reform Task Team, which the defence team had opposed its admissibility on November 22, 2019 sitting of the court.

 

Prosecution counsel, M.S Abubakar, had on said date, presented the first prosecution witness (PW1), Mairo Abdulahi Bashir, a business manager with the United Bank for Africa, UBA, who gave an account of how he opened bank accounts for the first defendant and that of a company allegedly belonging to him (Common Input and Properties Limited) and sought to tender the accounts documents  that included, account opening packages, bank statements, certification and mandate cards in evidence, which defence counsel, Francis Orasanye opposed on the grounds that the documents are ought to tendered by the person who signed them, citing Section 33 (1) (a) of the Evidence Act which states that a certificate tendered must be tendered by the maker of the said documents or be thrown out by the court.

 

The documents also allegedly contained fictitious financial transactions in local and foreign currencies traced to Maina.

 

In his ruling today, Justice Abang said tendering the documents by the prosecution witness was in compliance with Section 84 of the Evidenced Act, adding that the person who signed the documents did not act in personal capacity, but as a representative of UBA.

 

According to him, since the witness is branch manager of UBA, neither the UBA nor the witness has interest in the matter before the court.

 

He admitted the documents in evidence, marked as Exhibits B1, B2 and B3 respectively, and adjourned until November 27, 2019, for continuation of the trial.