Lessons from Al-Mustapha’s case

The trial of Al-Mustapha and others started 1998 till January 2012 when he was convicted and sentenced to death by a Lagos High Court.Perhaps it is for this reason that the constitution made provisions for any aggrieved party to go upstairs (to the Court of Appeal) where it is generally believed that three good heads […]

The trial of Al-Mustapha and others started 1998 till January 2012 when he was convicted and sentenced to death by a Lagos High Court.
Perhaps it is for this reason that the constitution made provisions for any aggrieved party to go upstairs (to the Court of Appeal) where it is generally believed that three good heads are better than one.
Today, Al-Mustapha’s freedom is engendered by a judgment of a competent court – the Court of Appeal, Lagos Division in exercise of its appellate jurisdiction. It is a valid and subsisting judgment which took effect immediately upon pronouncement.  
The trial which was in all ramifications not an ordinary trial was perhaps, the longest trial in the history of the country. Al-Mustapha was put on joint trial along with former Chief of Army Staff, Ishaya Bamaiyi, former Lagos State Police Commissioner James Danbaba, former Zamfara State military administrator (MILAD) Jibril Bala Yakubu and former Officer- in- Charge of mobile police unit (OC MOPOL), Aso Rock, Rabo Lawal.
They were charged with attempted murder of The Guardian publisher, Mr Alex Ibru, (a former minister) and complicity in the murder of Kudirat Abiola, wife of Chief MKO Abiola, who also died in mysterious circumstances in July, 1998, while under detention for declaring himself president following the annulment of an election by the Ibrahim Babangida administration, which he was widely believed to have won.In October of 1998, Al-Mustapha appeared in court alongside Mohammed Abacha and others. At the trial, Sergeant Barnabas Jabila Mshelia (aka Rogers), the star prosecution witness made some confessions that implicated Major Hamza Al-Mustaphaha. Among other things, Barnaba Jabila more popularly known as sergeant Rogers told Justice O.A. Williams of Lagos High Court that late Abraham Adesanya, late Chief Bola Ige, Chief Segun Osoba, Chief Alex Ibru and late Alhaja Kudirat Abiola were all considered to be enemies of the state by the Abacha administration. He claimed that he was responsible for the death of Kudirat Abiola, but merely followed the “obey without complain” tradition of the military. He confessed that he carried out those crimes because he was obeying instructions from Major Al-Mustapha who was his superior.
But in a swift turn around in later testimonies, Rogers told the court that the confessions he made earlier was because two former Ministers of Justice (including the late Bola Ige) and the former Lagos State Attorney General, visited him in prison and solicited his cooperation to implicate the suspects in return for material rewards. This submission offered by the star witness, obviously contradicted the previous one, thereby, discrediting the entire allegations.
Pleas to successive administrations for amnesty for the release of the Major fell on deaf ears,  giving baffled Nigerians the cause to conclude that there was more to the Al-Mustapha case than they were being told.
In fact, going by the prison calendar, 9 months is often computed as one year instead of the Gregorian Calender that computes 12 months to be one year.
Yahaya Mahmud SAN during a chat with our correspondent said that ,“if a person accused of murder will wait for 14 years to know whether he is guilty or not, something is fundamentally wrong with our legal system. And the relations of the victims will wait for 14 years only to be told that the person accused was innocent.”
Another senior lawyer, Hassan Liman SAN said that the trial was a travesty of justice.
“The law has its requirements and standards which at all times must be met and once certain requirements are not met especially in murder cases, any iota of doubt is always resolved in favour of the accused person, no matter the sentiments. Once there is no credible evidence, the accused person must be acquitted,” he said.
A trial that ought to have been conducted within one or two years dragged for 14 years which is not good for our legal system. This is a constitutional injustice because an accused person needs to know his fate within a reasonable time.
The evidence did not meet basic standard of prove, so the State needed not to have subjected him to the trial.