{"id":76404,"date":"2025-10-10T10:12:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=76404"},"modified":"2025-10-10T10:12:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:12:00","slug":"court-orders-trial-within-trial-in-emefieles-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/10\/10\/court-orders-trial-within-trial-in-emefieles-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Court Orders Trial-Within-Trial in Emefiele\u2019s Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Huldah Shado<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Justice Rahman Oshodi of the Lagos State High Court has ordered a trial-within-trial to determine whether the statement made by Henry Omoile, co-defendant of former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Governor Godwin Emefiele, to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), was voluntary.<\/p>\n<p>Emefiele and Omoile are facing a 19-count charge bordering on abuse of office, corruption, gratification, and fraudulent property transactions involving $4.5 billion and N2.8 billion.<\/p>\n<p>At Thursday\u2019s sitting, the court admitted several documents, including those retrieved from the mobile phone of John Adetola, Emefiele\u2019s former executive assistant.<\/p>\n<p>EFCC operative Alvan Gurumnaan testified that investigators traced $600,000 allegedly received by Emefiele directly and through intermediaries.<\/p>\n<p>The prosecution also tendered contract documents from CBN contractor Victor Onyedua, who reportedly confessed to paying kickbacks for contract approvals.<\/p>\n<p>Defence counsels Olalekan Ojo (SAN), and Rasheed Gbadamosi (SAN), objected, arguing the documents required certification. However, Justice Oshodi ruled them admissible, noting they were original correspondences.<\/p>\n<p>The judge also admitted Adetola\u2019s phone as an exhibit and allowed the defence to inspect it later.<\/p>\n<p>The matter was adjourned to December 2 and 3 for the trial-within-trial, while parties are to return on November 21 to report on arrangements for forensic examination of the phone and WhatsApp evidence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Huldah Shado &nbsp; Justice Rahman Oshodi of the Lagos State High Court has ordered a trial-within-trial to determine whether the statement made by Henry Omoile, co-defendant of former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Governor Godwin Emefiele, to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), was voluntary. Emefiele and Omoile are facing a 19-count charge [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":76405,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1386,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judiciary","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76404","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\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76406,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76404\/revisions\/76406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}