47.1 Billion Naira Bank Theft: Akingbola loses bid to stop trial

Date Posted: 16/07/2013

Former Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank Plc (now Access Bank), Erastus Akingbola, yesterday lost an application seeking to quash the N47.1 billion theft charge preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
The trial judge, Justice Adeniyi Onigbanjo, dismissed the application for lacking in merit. Onigbanjo adjourned the case till September 19 for mention. Akingbola is standing trial alongside the General Manager of Tropics Securities Limited, Bayo Dada, for allegedly stealing the money belonging to the bank.
The defendant had in the application filed on July 10 by his counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), asked the court to quash the charge.
Olanipekun had argued that the EFCC had no power to initiate criminal proceedings at the state High Court without a fiat issued by the attorney-general of the state. He also argued that there was no nexus in the proof of evidence linking Akingbola to any of the counts in the charge. However, counsel to the EFCC, Mr. Emmanuel Ukala (SAN), who opposed the application, urged the court to dismiss it.
In his ruling yesterday, Onigbanjo said the Court of Appeal had settled the issue in its ruling on a previous appeal filed by Akingbola against the ruling of the former trial judge, Justice Habeeb Abiru.
He said the Appeal Court had held that the EFCC, as a government agency, was qualified to institute criminal proceedings under Section 211 of the 1999 Constitution. Onigbanjo said he could therefore not rely on another ruling on a similar issue delivered by Justice Babajide Candide-Johnson of a Lagos High Court in Igbosere.
He said: “There is no decision on this issue yet by the Supreme Court so the Court of Appeal’s decision takes precedence over the decision of the lower court. I am bound to respect the Court of Appeal’s decision, irrespective of my personal conviction.
“Since this court is lower in hierarchy to the Court of Appeal, it cannot wish away the Court of Appeal’s decision on the same issues filed earlier by the same parties.”
The judge also held that a prima facie case had been made against Akingbola in the proof of evidence attached to the information. He said in his statements to the EFCC, Akingbola never denied knowledge of various transactions relating to the sums of money allegedly stolen during his tenure at the bank.