Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court in Abuja granted bail on Friday to Facebook user Chioma Okoli, setting the amount at N5 million. Okoli faces a two-count charge of conspiracy and cyber-stalking following her review of a tomato paste product from Erisco Foods Limited.<\/p>\n
Justice Lifu had previously adjourned the hearing to Friday after Okoli was arraigned by the Office of the Inspector General of Police. During her arraignment, Okoli pleaded not guilty to the charges. Her lawyer promptly filed for bail, but the court ordered her remand at the Suleja Correctional Centre pending a decision.<\/p>\n
In his ruling, Justice Lifu noted that the charges against Okoli are bailable. He emphasized that denying bail would amount to pre-trial punishment, which contradicts the principle of presumption of innocence as outlined in Section 36(5) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). He also took into account Okoli’s health status in his decision to grant bail.<\/p>\n
The bail conditions stipulate that Okoli must provide two sureties in the same amount. One surety must be either her spouse or a blood relative with a verifiable source of income and residence within the court’s jurisdiction. Both sureties are required to submit passport photographs. Additionally, Okoli must surrender her international passport, if she possesses one.<\/p>\n
Justice Lifu adjourned the case until June 13 for further proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court in Abuja granted bail on Friday to Facebook user Chioma Okoli, setting the amount at N5 million. Okoli faces a two-count charge of conspiracy and cyber-stalking following her review of a tomato paste product from Erisco Foods Limited. Justice Lifu had previously adjourned the hearing to Friday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32677,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-33378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33378","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33378"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33379,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33378\/revisions\/33379"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}