Court orders el-Rufai to face trial


BY OSCARLINE ONWUEMENYI

ABUJA-A Federal Capital Territory High Court presided over by Justice Sadiq Abubakar Umar, yesterday, turned down an application by a former Minister of FCT, Malam Nasir el-Rufai and two others to quash the charges of misconduct and abuse of office filed against them by Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.


In his ruling, Justice Umar said the consolidated motion on notice filed by the accused persons on May 12 and June 28, 2011, through their counsel is unmeritorious and has failed the test of law.

The judge, who maintained that the prosecution has established a prima facie case against them, ordered that the three accused persons must face trial to defend the charges against them.

The two other accused persons arraigned with el-Rufai are a former Director-General, Abuja Geographic Information System, AGIS; Altine Jubrin, and a former General Manager, AGIS, Ismail Iro.

The judge, said from the proof of evidence before the court, the three accused persons have explanation to make in the course of trial.

He also said that Section 2 of ICPC Act was elastic enough to hold the accused persons liable to face trial.

EFCC had on Wednesday, July 6, 2011, argued that the three accused persons as public officers, can be tried by the commission as the anti-graft agency has an absolute authority to prefer charges against them.

Counsel to the EFCC, Adebayo Adelodun, SAN, had questioned the motion seeking to quash the charges saying that it was an abuse of court processes to have brought the same motion which had earlier been ruled upon.

He said that the court had on March 28th, 2011, granted EFCC leave to prefer charges against the accused persons and that the court's decision was borne out of proof that the EFCC had a prima facie case against them.

Adelodun further averred that the defence counsel's submission that the first accused person, Mallam El- Rufai was not a public officer but rather a political appointee hence should not be charged under the ICPC's Act, was erroneous as section 2 of the ICPC Act clearly describes a public officer as one who is employed or engaged in the service of the federation.

"My lord, the enabling law has intrinsically described who a public officer is and takes into consideration circumstances of other people engaged as consultants, ministers, and other non- regular staff in the service of the federation."

On the argument by the defence counsel that the charges have violated the law of duplicity and should then be quashed, prosecution counsel said that according to some rulings of both the Supreme and Appeal courts, it is not in all cases that duplicity of charges are deemed as a sufficient ground to quash a case but only when there is an occasion to miscarry justice.

"The use of conjunctives 'and' and 'or' which the defence counsel are relying upon to drive their argument of duplicity cannot be sustained as it does not in any way mean that but is explanatory in nature as to the time of committing the crime," Adelodun had submitted. He had insisted that the crime for which the first accused was being charged was committed before his disengagement in May 29 2007.

Earlier, Messrs Akin Olujinmi (SAN) and Kanu Agabi (SAN), counsel to the accused persons had separately asked the court through applications brought to quash the case against their clients, saying that the offences being alleged were not disclosed in the proof of evidence and that it was an abuse of court processes to have duplicated their charges.

They submitted that the court needed to safeguard the accused persons from harassment and public embarrassment. The Senior Advocates opined that because the office of a minister was not described as a public servant, but was distinctively described in the constitution, no charge against the first accused person should be sustained.

Agabi particularly said: "The only thing tangible in their charge is that the fist accused revoked and re-assigned a land but I find nowhere in our laws where that is a crime. Rather Section 28 of the Land Use Act gives him the right to do so." The case is adjourned till November 15 and 16 for accelerated hearing.

El-Rufai and his co-accused were initially re-arraigned on April 17th, 2011. Their arraignment followed a petition to EFCC, chronicling allegations of abuse of office against El-Rufai and how he misappropriated government land which he allocated to his friends and family members, in flagrant breach of the Abuja Master plan.

According to the petition, the former minister, between 2003-2007, allocated ten plots of land in choice areas of Abuja and in various sizes to his family members, including his wife, Hadiza Isma El-Rufai, who got two plots- one in the Asokoro district and the other in the Kubwa district. Ten other family members and relations were also allocated different plots of land at various locations in the FCT. El-Rufai was granted bail on self-recognition by Justice Umar.

One of the count charges reads: "That you Mallam Nasir Ahmed El-Rufai (M) between 13th day of December, 2003 and 14th of December, 2007 or thereabout at the Ministry of Federal capital territory, Abuja in the course of and or in the performance of your official duties as the Minister of the federal Capital Territory did use your said Office and position to gratify and confer corrupt or unfair advantage on your relation to wit your wife Hadiza Ahmed El-Rufai by reallocating to her parts of the parcel of land known as plot No 1201, Asokoro District (A4) Abuja, originally allocated in the Federal Capital Territory Master plan to power Holding company of Nigeria Plc for the construction of transmitting/ injection sub-stations which fully and/or intentionally revoked for that purpose, thereby committing an offence contrary to and punishable under section 19 of the corrupt and Other related Offences act, 2000."


http://odili.net/news/source/2011/oct/19/326.html

madness at the highest order. this same rufai ran away from justice alongside ribadu but our messiah(jonathan) granted them both presidential pardon for his political reasons so why is the court coming back to revisit the matter that is dead? this is foolishness.

I now look forward to his next "messianic" article. Thieves and scoundrels seem to write those quite well these days.

1025

wHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Which matter is dead? Who killed it and who buried it? You kidding right? Because they ran away on their own accord and someone gives them pardon so to day to come back, does that exonorate them from any mis conduct while in office? I dont get you at all/.

Now this is my acid test for El-Rufai. I'm watching him closely and would like to see how this pans out. This will help me clarify the few "grey areas" about him. If he is clean, I have got myself a preferred presidential candidate for 2015. If he's dirty, I guess I'll have to keep searching.

get it[img]http://s07.flagcounter.com/count/DymW/bg=ffffff/txt=ffffff/border=ffffff/columns=1/maxflags=1/viewers=3/labels=0/[/img]
[img]http://2.s07.flagcounter.com/count/DymW/bg=ffffff/txt=ffffff/border=ffffff/columns=1/maxflags=1/viewers=3/labels=0/[/img]

Very good opportunity for El-rufai to clear his name once and for all. I'm so much excited about this 
However, he should continue with those articles of hos. It constantly exposes the folly of our leaders headed by the Retardeen.

El-Rufai has no case to answer, They are just trying to indict him because he refused to support Jonathan's candidacy ah has been standing by Buhari throughout all his election Petitions,

Lets see if El rufai comes out of this one clean.

efisher:

Now this is my acid test for El-Rufai. I'm watching him closely and would like to see how this pans out. This will help me clarify the few "grey areas" about him. If he is clean, I have got myself a preferred presidential candidate for 2015. If he's dirty, I guess I'll have to keep searching.

El Rufai,presidential material? ;pardon me pls
D charges preferred by d EFCC,ar surprisingly evn light,dis man has bn involved in questionable deals since his bureau of public enterprises days;he has recently metarmorphosed into a great thinker and decipher of d nation's problems & solution to it in d belief that those gullible enuf will fall for his rebranding,I wud rather b ruled by d slow thinking ijaw man we av now for d nxt 7yrs,or beta still by nobody,dan b supervised by el rufai
He shd face his court battles and answer for his stewardship of evry govt establishment he has headed;he is part of d rot that has brought us to this gutter we are in.

The man cannot escape this. I look forward to his next "righteous" newspaper article.

doctokwus:

El Rufai,presidential material? ;pardon me pls
D charges preferred by d EFCC,ar surprisingly evn light,dis man has bn involved in questionable deals since his bureau of public enterprises days;he has recently metarmorphosed into a great thinker and decipher of d nation's problems & solution to it in d belief that those gullible enuf will fall for his rebranding,I wud rather b ruled by d slow thinking ijaw man we av now for d nxt 7yrs,or beta still by nobody,dan b supervised by el rufai
He shd face his court battles and answer for his stewardship of evry govt establishment he has headed;he is part of d rot that has brought us to this gutter we are in.

Preach bro, preach!

Beaf:

The man cannot escape this. I look forward to his next "righteous" newspaper article.

That will be the bomb. It will show more of the Retardeen's stupidity and deception.

Demdem:

That will be the bomb. It will show more of the Retardeen's stupidity and deception.

You always sound like the woman slapping Aregbesola when you post; deeply agricultural and thoroughly unpolished. Like leader like follower.

doctokwus:

El Rufai,presidential material? ;pardon me pls
D charges preferred by d EFCC,ar surprisingly evn light,dis man has bn involved in questionable deals since his bureau of public enterprises days;he has recently metarmorphosed into a great thinker and decipher of d nation's problems & solution to it in d belief that those gullible enuf will fall for his rebranding,I wud rather b ruled by d slow thinking ijaw man we av now for d nxt 7yrs,or beta still by nobody,dan b supervised by el rufai
He shd face his court battles and answer for his stewardship of evry govt establishment he has headed;he is part of d rot that has brought us to this gutter we are in.

Doctor, i hear u. at least u are presently enjoying the Bala guy The Retardeen has placed on that seat presently. as far as i am concerned, El-Rufai to me is still the best Minister the FCT has ever had so far. That doesnt mean he was a saint or never had his faults though.

Beaf:

You always sound like the woman slapping Aregbesola when you post; deeply agricultural and thoroughly unpolished. Like leader like follower.

i have always known that Aregbesola will be your nemesis on this forum. you are presently on that track. whats unpolished in asking El-rufai to constantly reveal the stupidity and folly of The Retardeen by his articles?  Avnt you said worse things than that before on this forum by the way bleep Aregbe, he isnt my leader. at least for now.
Am i stepping on some veins here?

el-Rufai's name has come up in too many dirty controversies that I doubt he still has my respect.

I still rate Ribadu above him in terms of genuine passion for Nigeria.

@Jarus, that may not be unconnected to the fact that he has stepped on so many toes. A lot of people dislike him because of the losses they incurred when he was FCT minister. The same people can do everything to pull him as a way of "payback". Anyway, let's see how the case ends b4 I can throw my weight behind him.

Jarus:

el-Rufai's name has come up in too many dirty controversies that I doubt he still has my respect.

I still rate Ribadu above him in terms of genuine passion for Nigeria.

Not clean but very competent. Don't even compare El-rufai to Ribadu, they are not in the same class.

True dat. Out of all the ministers we've had since Obj, he has impressed me the most. He has demonstrated that he knows the right thing to do and he has the ability and will power to implement it. His type is very rare. Fashola is another person who has demonstrated similar traits.

I'm not so sure about el-rufai even as I'm hopeless about this Goodluck administration.

Demdem:

Doctor, i hear u. at least u are presently enjoying the Bala guy The Retardeen has placed on that seat presently. as far as i am concerned, El-Rufai to me is still the best Minister the FCT has ever had so far. That doesnt mean he was a saint or never had his faults though.

Demdem,dnt allow amadioha glue ur hand to that keypad(pardon my lang,bro),for dis thing u jst sed that he has bn d bst fct minister;using whc criteria?Under him,lands were bein allocated and disallocated left, right& centre as if he was placing cards,construction were being done on drainage lines(4get his highly selective destructions),and u come to asert he has bn d bst.D guy is in d same class as Ribadu:sycophants,stylishly very corrupt,willing to use any method to achieve d puppeters will.

I hope El Rufia becomes the North's Consensus Candidate in 2015. It's make life very easy. Carry go El Rufia nothing do you.