By Chuma Okafor

The Office of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Olisa Metuh has read the Tuesday, March 29, 2016 editorial (Our Stand) of the Leadership Newspapers, titled “Justice Abang, Metuh and the Rule of Law”.

Whereas Chief Olisa Metuh has refrained from making comments in the media on his case before the court, we are, however, persuaded after reading through the editorial that the authors are not adequately informed about the developments in the case, hence our brief response.

First, we want to state that the issue of Chief Metuh and the judge being classmates in the Law School and their past encounters have never been the exclusive reasons his lawyers wrote to the chief judge of the Federal High Court requesting for transfer of his case, as being portrayed by the judge and a section of the media.

In actual fact and for the records, the ‘Letter of Transfer’ which was brought to the public domain by Justice Abang when he invited anybody that is interested to access same in his court as they are now public documents, raised 16 salient points bordering on bias and infractions of rules of judicial process (though the judge, for reasons best known to him, chose to disclose only three in the open court).

Top on that list is the trial judge’s refusal to release the record of proceedings of the court to Chief Metuh, thereby denying him his constitutionally guaranteed right to appeal interlocutory decisions taken by the court. The said record was released immediately he knew about the Letter of Transfer.

Chief Metuh, in his letter was clear in stating that he applied for the records on the 8th of February 2016 but that the judge refused to release the document until March 15th 2016, by which time his rights to appeal (within 2 weeks) had been denied him, thereby prompting his letter to the chief judge. This serious infraction, which betrays the determination to frustrate Metuh’s defence and possible appeal has not been explained by Justice Abang.

The question is, why would a judge refuse to release the record of proceedings to an accused in a criminal trial and in a trial he sits day to day?

Another salient point raised by Chief Metuh is that Justice Abang, in ruling on his No-Case Submission on March 9, 2016, surprisingly descended into the arena and imported other issues that were not in the original charges brought against the defendant by the EFCC.

For instance, Justice Abang, even after warning himself of the need not to go into the substance of the case, he went on in the open court to state with respect to Counts 5 and 6 (which deal with transaction with regard to the sum of USD2m (two million dollars) with a non-financial institution), that even if the origin or source of the money was not part of the charge, the defendants must prove same as that forms the basis of money laundering offence. By this, the judge took sides and got himself assisting the prosecution to explore new opportunity. Such obvious bias had occurred severally in the course of the trial prompting the amendment of charges by the prosecution, a development that calls to question the detachment of the judge?

In the same vein, though Chief Metuh in his statement at the EFCC stated that he received the contentious N400 million from the then leader of the PDP and former President Goodluck Jonathan, after a presentation with top level PDP functionaries — a position that was corroborated by a prosecution witness, Justice Abang, in delivering the ruling on the No-Case Submission again descended into the arena and pronounced a guilty verdict ahead of defence by directly querying Chief Metuh why he did not inform the police or the EFCC when he received the money.

Another important point raised in the letter is that Justice Abang on several occasions stated in the open court that he had no discretion to exercise one way or the other where the prosecutor opposed the defendant’s applications. (Please note that Chief Metuh’s lawyers are not insisting he rules in his favour but that his discretion cannot be denied by the prosecutor’s objection). The contention by Chief Metuh is that it is wrong for a trial judge in a criminal case to tie his discretion to the prosecution’s disposition and as such cannot guarantee justice.

Also, earlier in his letter, Chief Metuh lamented that after the stringent bail conditions imposed on him by Justice Abang, for which he spent nine days in prison detention, the judge refused to give him enough time to prepare for his defense in line with Section 36(6)(b) of the Constitution.

On the issue of being classmates, it is instructive to note that we find Justice Abang’s continuous denial rather demeaning even when he admitted in his response to the letter of transfer that he was in the recent re-unions of the class in Lagos, Enugu and particularly that of Abuja, an event where Chief Metuh was called out and conferred with an Achievement Award for his election as the National Publicity Secretary of the PDP.

This took place in a hall that can barely take 150 persons at the Hilton Hotel.

While we agree that the state reserves the right to bring charges against any citizen suspected of wrongdoing, we posit that it remains the inalienable right of the citizen and indeed all Nigerians to have unfettered access to justice derived from fair hearing as guaranteed by the constitution, and this right should not be denied especially where the arbiter shows that he has pre-judged the defendant.

From the foregoing therefore, it is obvious that Chief Metuh is not in any way employing any delay tactics whatsoever, but rather seeking fair hearing and justice especially upon the evidence of manifest bias exhibited in the course of the trial.

The crux of the matter is that the ability of the judge to do justice and be seen as having done justice has been strongly called to question. Our take here therefore is that in all, justice should not only be done but must always be seen to be done.

—Hon. Okafor is personal assistant to Chief Olisa Metuh

http://www.euphemiaudanoh.com/2016/03/re-justice-abang-metuh-and-rule-of-law.html