I was under serious influence during Tinubu’s trial, says CCT judge
Danladi Umar, chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), on Tuesday, said that he was under “serious” influence in the trial of Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos state and national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
He, however, added that despite the “influence” he was able to deliver justice in the case.
Tinubu was tried at the tribunal in 2011 for allegedly operating foreign accounts while he was governor between 1999 and 2007, but he was discharged and acquitted.
Speaking as the trial of Senate President Bukola Saraki resumed, Umar also directed the defence counsel to restrict the number of lawyers who would cross-examine the prosecution witness to just one.
He said that the conduct of the cross-examination had been untidy with the frequent change of lawyers by the defence team.
“It is certainly unreasonable that all the 100 counsel of the defence will have a bite at the cherry,” he said.
“Kanu Agabi should continue to conduct the cross examination in this case.
“I want to say that in the case of Bola Tinubu we were under serious influence, but we did what we had to do and discharged him. So we must be fair to ourselves not to delay this trial.”
Also speaking, Williams Atedze, a member of the tribunal, said that whichever way the case of Saraki went it would mark a watershed in the history of Nigeria.
“Today, the country is going down. We can’t buy fuel, we can’t tomatoes,” he said.
“Today, the country is going down. We can’t buy fuel, we can’t tomatoes,”. All because of people like the accused!
Watch for this Judge. I will compromise with this case becos of the statement what has the nation.
This Mr Umar should just keep quite and stop contradicting and embarrassing himself. The whole Nigeria already knows he is biased and being used to malign and convict Saraki. This same man that only last week EFCC detectives confessed during the trial of his former PA over bribery allegations that Umar was implicated as the bribe beneficiary in a written statement by his PA. We all know EFCC are blackmailing him. Who is he trying to deceive? after saying with his own mouth that he cannot apply a precedent judgment he gave to Saraki because he gave that previous Judgment in error(ONLY IN NIGERIA).He is now looking for public sympathy with this Tinubu story. He is definitely confused and will get his own justice in hell. Last week he ruled in favour of Saraki that he has a right to defend himself with as many lawyers as he sees necessary. This week ,after obviously been scolded by his pay masters over that ruling he came again to change mouth that he made mistake ,that Saraki lawyers are too much so only his lead counsel should question witness . Flip flopping CCT Chairman. Disgraceful. We can now all see that with so much lack of evidence on the prosecution side(just verbal accusations) ,the case should not have even been entertained by the CCT in the first place.