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Federal High Court in Abuja on Friday ordered that the National Publicity
Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisa Metuh, should be
remanded in prison till Tuesday, the day scheduled for the hearing of his bail
application with respect to the charges of money laundering preferred against
him.
Justice
Okon Abang gave the order after the PDP spokesperson pleaded not guilty to the
seven counts of money laundering preferred against him by the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission.
The
EFCC alleged that Metuh received N400m, part of the money meant for the
procurement of arms, from the Office of the National Security Adviser in
November 2014.
The anti-graft agency alleged that the immediate past NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki
(retd), who is also facing two sets of other charges bordering on the diversion
of arms funds, released the money to the PDP National Publicity Secretary and a
firm, Destra Investments Limited through their Diamond Bank Plc accounts for
campaign activities of the PDP.
Earlier on Friday, Justice Abang rejected the request by
defence counsel, Chief Chris Uche (SAN), to make oral application for Metuh’s
bail.
The judge ruled that the EFCC counsel, Mr. Sylvester Tahir,
having opposed the oral application for bail and the fact that evidence that
needed to be adduced for and against the bail application could not be led from
the bar (by lawyers), it was necessary to direct the defence to make the
application formal.
Tahir also opposed the request by the defence that Metuh
should be remanded in EFCC custody.
The judge upheld the objection and directed that the accused
should be remanded in prison.
The judge directed the defence to file and serve the bail
application within six hours from the time of delivering the ruling and also
directed EFCC, if it so wished, to file and serve its objection to it within 24
hours.
He ruled that the defence was at liberty to file a further
response to EFCC’s objection to the bail application within five hours if it
intended to.
The judge granted an accelerated hearing of the case and thus
directed that the trial would commence on January 25 and would proceed day to
day.
The judge, who was newly redeployed from Lagos Division of
the court to the Abuja Division, warned lawyers against filing frivolous
application targeted at the delaying the case.
“Abuja Bar, please note this, there will be no frivolous
application to delay the case. The trial will start on January 25. Order of
accelerated hearing is granted and the case will continue day to day.
Prosecution, you must get your witnesses ready every day,” Justice Abang said.
The Friday’s proceedings went on amid solidarity protest
outside court premises by those who called for the release of Metuh from
custody.
Earlier, Metuh who was arraigned along with his firm, Destra
Investments Limited, pleaded not guilty to all the seven counts.
The EFCC alleged in the laundering case, marked
FHC/ABJ/CR/05/2016, that Metuh and Destra, through their accounts with Diamond
Bank Plc, collected the sum of N400m from the NSA office on November 22, 2015
for PDP’s campaign activities.
The prosecution alleged that the N400m was “part of the
proceeds of an unlawful activity” of the immediate past NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki
(retd.).
In the fresh charges, Metuh and Destra allegedly transferred
the sum of N21.8m to Anenih and they (Metuh and Destra) thereby committed an
offence contrary to section 15(2) (b) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition)
Act, 2011 (as amended in 2012) and punishable under section 15(3) of the same
Act.
The EFCC alleged in the last and seventh count that of the
N400m collected from the NSA office, Metuh transferred the sum of N21, 776,000
to Anenih on December 4, 2014.
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