 |
| , Ehidiamhem Okoyomon, |
Justice E. S. Chukwu of the Federal High Court, Maitama, Abuja, on Wednesday, December 17, 2014 adjourned ruling on the extradition proceedings brought by the office of Attorney General of the Federation against former managing director of Nigeria Security Minting and Printing Company, NSMPC, Ehidiamhem Okoyomon, to January 23, 2015.
Okoyomon is wanted in the United Kingdom over his alleged role in the
bribery scandal involving officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the
NSMPC and Securency International Pty of Australia between 2006 and 2008.
In a bid to stall his
extradition to the UK
for trial over the alleged bribe scam, Okoyomon had in October, through his
counsel, Alex Iziyon, SAN, challenged the jurisdiction of the court to
entertain the application to extradite him.
Iziyon had argued that the
1931 treaty which the prosecution counsel M. S. Hassan relied upon had been
repealed by Decree No 87 of 1966, and was not a law.
Hassan had however countered
his argument explaining that the 1931 treaty became applicable to Nigeria in
1935 and was never repealed by any enactment, stressing that schedule 2 under
extradition law provides that “the law shall apply to all Commonwealth nations”.
It would be recalled that
Justice Chukwu after listening to the argument of both counsel had on October
7, 2014 fixed December 1, 2014 for ruling on the matter.
However, justice Chukwu adjourned his
ruling on that day (December 1, 2014) to December 17, 2014 for reasons that he
had not finished writing the ruling.
At the resumed sitting today, the judge
asked both the prosecuting and defence counsel to come back on January 23, 2015
as the ruling was almost ready.
No comments:
Post a Comment