{"id":82019,"date":"2026-01-22T13:03:41","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T13:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=82019"},"modified":"2026-01-22T13:03:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T13:03:41","slug":"supreme-court-strikes-out-kudirat-abiola-murder-case-against-al-mustapha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2026\/01\/22\/supreme-court-strikes-out-kudirat-abiola-murder-case-against-al-mustapha\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Strikes Out Kudirat Abiola Murder Case Against Al-Mustapha"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Adenike Lawal<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court has struck out the long-running murder case against Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (rtd), former Chief Security Officer to late military ruler Sani Abacha, over the killing of pro-democracy activist Alhaja Kudirat Abiola.<br \/>\nIn a unanimous decision on Thursday, a five-member panel of the apex court, led by Justice Uwani Aba-Aji, dismissed appeals filed by the Lagos State Government, ruling that the state had abandoned the prosecution.<\/p>\n<p>The court held that Lagos State failed to appear at the hearing and had not filed any legal processes since 2014, despite being granted permission to re-open the case. Counsel to Al-Mustapha, Paul Daudu, SAN, told the court that the state ignored a 30-day window granted to file a notice of appeal and took no steps to prosecute the matter for over nine years.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Aba-Aji confirmed that the state was duly served with hearing notices, describing its conduct as unacceptable. The appeal marked SC\/CR\/45\/2014 was accordingly dismissed, while a related appeal filed by the Lagos State governor, SC\/CR\/6\/2014, was also struck out.<br \/>\nAlhaja Kudirat Abiola, wife of the late MKO Abiola, was assassinated in Lagos on June 4, 1996, during the struggle following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling brings to a close a case dating back more than a decade. In 2013, the Court of Appeal had discharged and acquitted Al-Mustapha, overturning a Lagos High Court judgment that sentenced him and others to death, citing insufficient evidence.<\/p>\n<p>With Thursday\u2019s decision, the Supreme Court has formally laid the matter to rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adenike Lawal The Supreme Court has struck out the long-running murder case against Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (rtd), former Chief Security Officer to late military ruler Sani Abacha, over the killing of pro-democracy activist Alhaja Kudirat Abiola. In a unanimous decision on Thursday, a five-member panel of the apex court, led by Justice Uwani Aba-Aji, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":82020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1386,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82019","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\/82019","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=82019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82021,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82019\/revisions\/82021"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}