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Judge questions Malami’s motives against Saraki, others in forgery case 

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Judge questions Malami’s motives against Saraki, others in forgery case

A Federal High Court in Abuja has queried the haste with which the Attorney General of the Federation,  AGF, Abubakar Malami, filed the forgery charge against Senate President, Bukola Saraki and three others, when he was aware of a suit challenging the competence of the police report on the case.

Justice Gabriel Kolawole made the querry when he ruled on an ex-parte motion for an injunction restraining the Inspector General of Police, IGP IK Idris and Malami from going ahead with the prosecution of the forgery charges against the Saraki and three others over allegations of forging the Senate Standing Orders 2015.

The application was filed by senator Gilbert Nnaji, urging the court to stop the defendants from acting on the police report issued with respect to the case.

The judge however turned down the application.

Justice Kolawole ruled: “In terms of the restraining orders, which the plaintiff seeks in the prayer one of his motion ex-parte, I am unable to grant the prayers because the plaintiff has not been able to overcome the issue of his locus standing, which I had raised at the proceedings of 27 July, 2015.

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“It is not sufficient, when the Supreme Court’s decision in Senator Abaraham Adesanya v. President of Nigeria & another (1981) 5 SC 112 is applied,  for the plaintiff, who has not shown that he is one of the defendants listed in the criminal charge attached as Exhibit B to this motion ex-parte, to be conferred, in the context of the provision of Section 6(6)(b) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) with the cloak of an ‘aggrieved’ person who ought to be granted access to ventilate his grievance and to seek the interim orders in his motion ex-parte.”

It would be recalled that the Federal Government had on June 10, 2016 preferred two counts of criminal conspiracy and forgery of the Standing Rules of the Senate used for the leadership election of the presiding officers of the Senate in June last year against Saraki, the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu and two others.

According  to Justice Kolawole, he would have dismissed the charge against Saraki and others when he discovered it was abuse of court process if not that the case was before a court of coordinate jurisdiction.

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