By; BAYO AKAMO, Ibadan
Counsel to a Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) chieftain Senator Ayo Adeseun, Barrister Michael Lana has raised alarm of an alleged ploy by the Economics and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to re arrest Senator Adeseun and some key PDP members in Oyo state over N650million used to prosecute the 2015 presidential election.
Barrister Lana who raised the alarm in a petition dated April 8th, 2017 and addressed to the EFCC Zonal Director in Ikoyi, Lagos alleged that about forty-eight hours to last Friday’s sitting presided over by Justice Ayo Emmanuel,an EFCC agent, Mr. Usman Zakari threatened to arrest Senator Adeseun’s surety in the matter, (Pharmacist Remi Adeseun) should he fail to produce the Senator in court on Friday.
In the three-page letter copied the EFCC lawyer, Barrister Rotimi Oyedepo, Esq, Usman Zakari, Danladi Daniel and Garba Dugum and the Station Registrar of the Federal High Court, Ibadan and the Secretary-General of the Nigerian Bar Association,Abuja notified them of the pendency of a motion to restrain the anti-graft agency and its officers from arresting or tampering with the liberty of the defendants.
Barrister Lana stressed in the petition that further threats of arrest of Remi Adeseun, “ran contrary to the law moreso that “he (Remi Adeseun) is one of the 6, 320 witnesses lined up by the defendant as witnesses for the defence in the charge and the law is trite that contacting, communicating with or threatening a defendant or his witness is a contempt of court.”
The counsel in the letter called the attention of the EFCC Zonal Director to three pending applications “to strike out the charge for want of jurisdiction”; “application for an order dispensing with the physical appearance of the defendant” and “an order of injunction restraining the complainant from arresting defendant pending the determination of the application” and “ an application for bail”.
Barrister Lana pointed out in the petition that “resorting to threat of re-arrest of the defendant (Adeseun) and his surety, Remi Adeseun by the agency amounted “to abuse of office and an oppressive and reckless use of power as the law is trite that once a matter has been submitted to court, it is no longer within the power of either party to do anything in relation to it.”
“The power vested in your commission to arrest and detain for the purpose of bringing a person before the court under section 35 of the constitution ceased upon your instituting a criminal charge and the appearance of counsel and to the appearance of the defendant in court. The power to bring defendants to court is vested vide section 382 of ACJA on the court and not on the commission.
Therefore your threat of arrest of our client and his surety is nothing but a slap on the face and the usurpation of the powers of the court. This is not only an affront to the principle of separation of powers as enshrined in the constitution but also contemptuous of the court as it denigrates the judicial institution”he stated.
Barrister Lana added that “it is also a show of unwarranted naked use of power to start punishing the defendant and his surety even before the trial started”.
It will be recalled that Senator Adeseun was arrested on May 10th, 2016 and kept in EFCC custody for 40 days during EFCC’s investigation of the N650 million fund expended on behalf of the PDP to prosecute the 2015 presidential election in Oyo State.
