Justice Mohammed Liman of a Lagos Federal High Court has adjourned till December 11 for the re-arraignment of the former speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, and his aide, Oyebode Atoyebi.
The adjournment was sequel to his lawyer request despite protests by counsel to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Rotimi Oyedepo, that the case has dragged for too long.
According to Oyedepo, the case has suffers six years set back after the prosecution has given evidence and closed its case but the then judge, Justice Ibrahim Buba discharged the defendants on no-case submission, which travelled up to the Supreme Court.
The EFCC had charged the former speaker and his aide with 54 amended counts of money laundering allegations amounting to over N500 million.
The EFCC said the defendants received the money from the Lagos State House of Assembly without passing through a financial institution.
The defendants were discharged by Mr Buba in September 2014 after he upheld the no-case submission arguments by Mr Ikuforiji’s lawyer, Wole Olanipekun, SAN.
The judge held that the EFCC ought to have known that they were not investigating Mr. Ikuforiji as an individual, but his office as an institution.
In November 2016, a Court of Appeal overturned the lower court’s decision and ordered that the defendants be retried by another judge.
In a unanimous judgment, the court held that the offences created by Section 1 of the Money Laundering Act 2004 and 2011 respectively were strict liability offences.
The judges also said that their proofs do not depend on the purposes the money was used for if the amount was above the threshold stipulated by law.
A Supreme Court decision in June last year held that the appellate court was right in declaring that the EFCC had established a prima facie case against the defendants.
