Offa Robbery Case: ‘My Lord, Why the Hurry?’ Lawyer Asks Judge

The ongoing criminal case instituted by the Kwara State Government against two former governors, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki and Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, and two others took a dramatic turn yesterday when counsel to Saraki, Adebayo Adelodun, SAN, questioned the urgency with which the presiding judge appeared to be handling the proceedings.

Adelodun raised the question before Justice Osuolale Ajayi after lawyers to both parties had made their submissions on whether the hearing in the case had formally commenced.

The judge, while delivering his ruling, inadvertently ventured into a pending application by the defendants on which he had yet to rule, prompting the defence to caution that such a move could amount to the court overreaching itself.

When Justice Ajayi subsequently ruled that the matter should proceed to arraignment, the defence counsel drew his attention to the court’s records, which they said showed that the defendants had not been properly served with the processes relating to the amended charges.

According to the defence, only their lawyers had been served, and the defendants could not be arraigned while they were still challenging the failure to serve them personally with the amended charge.

The judge thereafter directed the parties to return to court later in the afternoon for his decision.

However, the courtroom was thrown into laughter when Adelodun, SAN, who is representing Saraki, questioned the apparent urgency surrounding a case that had been before the court since 2018.

“My Lord, why the hurry?” the senior advocate asked, demanding to know what emergency had suddenly made the speedy determination of the case so urgent, as though the world would collapse if the matter was not immediately concluded.

The defence team also reminded the court that a ruling by the Court of Appeal was still pending on their application for a stay of proceedings at the trial court.

The application, they explained, was intended to halt further proceedings pending the appellate court’s determination of issues bordering on jurisdiction and the competence of the trial judge to preside over both civil and criminal cases arising from the same subject matter.

The defence further recalled that Justice Ajayi had, during an earlier sitting, expressed his intention to await the Court of Appeal’s decision on their application seeking an order directing the parties to maintain the status quo ante bellum pending the determination of the jurisdictional issues.