The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, on Friday, admitted former power minister Saleh Mamman to a N10 billion bail with two sureties.<\/p>\n
Justice James Omotosho, in a ruling on Mr Mamman\u2019s bail application moved by his counsel, Femi Ate, held that alternatively, the former minister should enter into a bond or agreement of N10 billion with a bank.<\/p>\n
The judge held that the sureties must have landed property within the jurisdiction of the court.<\/p>\n
Justice Omotosho also held that the sureties\u2019 property, which must have title registers, must be worth N750 million.<\/p>\n
Moreover, the judge said the sureties must present an affidavit of means and three years of tax evidence, which the court registrar would verify. He ordered sureties to produce a passport photograph each while Mr Mamman submitted his international passport to the court registry.<\/p>\n
Justice Omotosho, who ordered Mr Mamman to remain in Kuje Correctional Centre pending the perfection of his bail, adjourned the matter until September 25 for trial.<\/p>\n
Justice Omotosho had, on Thursday, ordered the remand of the ex-minister in the correctional centre pending the hearing of his bail application.<\/p>\n
The judge gave the order after Mamman pleaded not guilty to a 12-count amended charge bordering on money laundering offences.<\/p>\n
Upon hearing the bail application on Friday, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission\u2019s lawyer, A.O. Mohammed, did not oppose Mr Mamman\u2019s bail plea.<\/p>\n
Delivering the ruling, the judge said granting bail is the defendant\u2019s constitutional right, which must be exercised judicially and judiciously.<\/p>\n
He said the defendant is innocent until proven guilty by law.<\/p>\n
EFCC had filed a 12-count money laundering charge against Mr Mamman.<\/p>\n
He was alleged to have committed money laundering offences to N33 billion.<\/p>\n
The former minister served under then-President Buhari from 2019 to 2021.<\/p>\n
On May 10, 2021, he was arrested and detained at the headquarters of the anti-graft agency in Abuja.<\/p>\n
Mr Buhari had, on September 1, 2021, sacked Mr Mamman and then-agric minister Sabo Nanono in what was called a cabinet restructuring.<\/p>\n
Mr Mamman was accused of conspiring with the ministry staff in charge of the accounts of the Zungeru and Mambilla Hydro Electric Power projects to divert billions of naira.<\/p>\n
The investigations uncovered property in Nigeria and overseas allegedly linked to the suspects, while millions of naira and dollars had reportedly been recovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, on Friday, admitted former power minister Saleh Mamman to a N10 billion bail with two sureties. Justice James Omotosho, in a ruling on Mr Mamman\u2019s bail application moved by his counsel, Femi Ate, held that alternatively, the former minister should enter into a bond or agreement of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":38585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38584","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=38584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38586,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38584\/revisions\/38586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}