Unforgettable 1,018 days of high drama
Simon Kolawole, the founder of Cable Online newspaper is usually a jovial and jolly good fellow. However, when in a phone conversation sometime in July 2015, he joked about a plot to “deal” with my principal, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, the then newly-elected President of the Eighth Senate, “for disobeying us and getting a position […]
Simon Kolawole, the founder of Cable Online newspaper is usually a jovial and jolly good fellow. However, when in a phone conversation sometime in July 2015, he joked about a plot to “deal” with my principal, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, the then newly-elected President of the Eighth Senate, “for disobeying us and getting a position that we reserved for somebody else”, I knew there was trouble. In fact, in that expensive joke, he was passing an important message to me without giving away too much information. Immediately, I informed my boss. Though he was opposed to our raising the alarm on this new threat, with the benefit of hindsight, I realized he knew what was going on but had a different approach to the issue.
The Code of Conduct Tribunal Act remains the most dangerous legal instrument to deal with a political enemy because the provisions of its Section 2, sub-Section 2 clearly spell it out that anybody convicted under it will vacate his current position, forfeit the property said to be undeclared and get a ban of 10 years from holding any elective or appointive position. The first signal that the expected case would have a lot of twists and turns was when on September 11 2015, a Wednesday, we read the 13-count charge on an online newspaper, Sahara Reporters, even before the defendant was served. By The following day, while we were all studying the charges as printed from the online medium, we heard of an attempt to serve the process through the then Chief of Staff to the Senate President, Sen. Isa Galaudu. This was a time when the Senate itself was on recess. On September 14, the case came up at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, Utako, with the Tribunal chairman, Mr. Umar, threatening fire and brimstone. He actually issued an arrest warrant against the Senate President.
The defendant had less than 24 hours to assemble a legal team or study the charges. It was as a result of the latter consideration that many of his supporters and friends advised that the Senate President should not make appearance in the Tribunal on that first day in the Tribunal. By that time, the Senate President had relocated to his guest house which shared a wall with the official residence of the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase. The relocation happened as a result of the fire incident in the private residence of the Sarakis. The new location and the arrest warrant from Mr. Umar heightened the tension around the Senate President. Many of his friends, associates and supporters were afraid he could be arrested as the IGP was now his next door neighbour. However, Arase, a fine officer, refused to get involved in the politics of the CCT trial.
Unfazed, Saraki put together a legal team headed by former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. Joseph Daudu, SAN. Before the first appearance of the Senate President on September 22, 2015 at the Tribunal, a top source in government had boasted to me that Saraki would not be on the seat of the Senate President when the red chamber of the National Assembly would be holding confirmation hearing for ministers-designate.
One of such issues arising from the provision of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act gave those of us in Saraki’s team some measure of confidence that the charges were filed in violation of its Section 3 (d). The section states that before a case is filed against any defendant, his attention must have been called by the Bureau to the inconsistencies in his asset declaration form and he must have been given the opportunity to make necessary corrections. It is only if he insists on the correctness of the entry that he can be brought before the Tribunal.
Eventually, the apex court gave a ruling which conferred unprecedented powers on the CCT. The Tribunal now has criminal jurisdiction and could use the provisions of Administration of Criminal Justice Act. Also, it was decided that two out of a three-member Tribunal is a proper quorum. Today, Saraki is being praised for patiently and consistently going through the entire judicial architecture to prove his innocence. Thank God that he did not listen to the ceaseless flak coming from the mob on his desire to demonstrate faith in the nation’s judicial process.
From the beginning, the Senate President in his initial address to the court had made it clear that the case was politically motivated and that he was being persecuted for emerging as Senate President against the wishes of some principalities in his party. He also said he believes in the ability of the judiciary to give justice to the ordinary person.
The trial proper had been an eye-opener. Having witnessed the entire trial from the beginning to the end, including sometimes following up on discussions by the legal team or participating fully in other talks concerning the case, one will say that the Saraki case has on its own become a locus classicus case on the issue of asset declaration and an example of how not to prosecute a case. Two instances will suffice here: Saraki was accused of anticipatory declaration of a property which he had owned and bought two clear years before he became governor, just because a rival politician in what now appears to be loose talk, claimed he knew that the sale, in 2005, of all the government houses in the area where the property in question was located and that the property could not have been correctly filled by Saraki in a 2003 asset declaration form.
Also, there was so much propaganda about Saraki collecting double salary from Kwara State and National Assembly. Yet, throughout the trial, the prosecutor did not call any witness in support of the claim. It is the same way, that for over two years after the commencement of the trial, the investigators never visited all the property of the defendants being cited in the case. At every point, it showed that the prosecution obviously did not hope to get conviction based on diligent efforts to prove their case in the trial room. It relied on outside the court means to convict the defendant. Perhaps, the plan was to just humiliate the Senate President, use the case to incite Senators against him so that he could be impeached, damage his political future or rush him into a pre-determined judicial outcome.
The revelations from the Saraki case showed that the anti-graft agencies need to be overhauled. Its investigators require comprehensive training, home and abroad. There is need for diligent prosecution and so the agencies should not be rushing to court without being sure of their facts, case and witnesses. More efforts should be put into diligent prosecution instead of media trial and needless propaganda.
From what I witnessed in this just-concluded and rested case, very soon, as we have the Saraki vs. Kotoye case as a locus classicus case in commercial law, the Saraki vs. FRN case will soon be a subject of study in the law school and faculties of law in the universities in the area of constitutional law, commercial law and criminal law, just as it will be cited for many years to come in court rooms.
Olaniyonu is Special Adviser (Media and Publicity) to the Senate President.