In a significant legal development, a Federal High Court in Ikoyi, Lagos, has absolved Patrick Akpobolokemi, former Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), of charges relating to an alleged N8,537,586,798.58 fraud.<\/p>\n
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had brought the case against Akpobolokemi and three other defendants.<\/p>\n
Justice Ayokunle Faji delivered the ruling, acquitting Akpobolokemi and Josephine Otuaga, a NIMASA staff member, based on a no-case submission filed by the defendants against the 22-count charge.<\/p>\n
Akpobolokemi had been arraigned alongside Major-General Emmanuel Atewe (retd.), a former Commander of the Joint Task Force Operation Pulo Shield, and two other agency workers, Kime Engonzu and Josephine Otuaga.<\/p>\n
While the court found insufficient evidence to link Akpobolokemi and Otuaga to the alleged crimes, it ruled that Atewe and Engonzu must present a defense against counts 12 to 22 of the charge.<\/p>\n
The defendants had all pleaded not guilty at the onset of the trial.<\/p>\n
The court’s decision rested on its assessment of the evidence provided by the prosecution, which it deemed insufficient to establish a prima facie case against Akpobolokemi in relation to counts one to 11 of the charge.<\/p>\n
Of the 11 witnesses presented by the prosecution, only one provided evidence implicating Akpobolokemi, while others testified that they had no knowledge of or dealings with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a significant legal development, a Federal High Court in Ikoyi, Lagos, has absolved Patrick Akpobolokemi, former Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), of charges relating to an alleged N8,537,586,798.58 fraud. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had brought the case against Akpobolokemi and three other defendants. Justice Ayokunle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":28479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-28478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28478"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28502,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28478\/revisions\/28502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}