Minister for Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Adoke (SAN) has stormed the Federal Capital Territory High Court with a libel process and Anti-Corruption Network and it’s Secretary, Dino Melaye, demanding N10.2 billion as damages. Already, the Federal Capital Territory High Court sitting in Abuja has summoned Melaye to appear either in person or by counsel to substantiate the allegation.
Specifically, Adoke is demanding N10billion as damages if Melaye could not substantiate the allegation. He is also asking for N200 million to defray the professional fees of lawyers he hired to prosecute the case. A consortium of four Chambers of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) including Chief Bolaji Ayorinde (SAN), Donald Denigwe (SAN), Babajide Koku (SAN) and Ahmed Raji (SAN) had been hired to prosecute the suit.
In his statement of claim, Adoke (SAN) had weaved the story of his life and how he struggled to build his career and integrity, attending various schools, seminars and holding various offices with impeccable records before he was made the Attorney- General of the Federation in 2010.
Although no past Attorney-General of the Federation since democracy berthed had served without being accused of gross abuse of office and outright corruption, Adoke (SAN) is the first to break the record by voluntarily submitting himself for probe and possible prosecution.
He denied all the allegations contained in the letter written by Melaye and added that he had no problem with anybody criticizing him in the way he had handled the duties of his office but that he would never allow anybody to make criminal allegations against him when his decisions in all the cases mentioned were selfless and in the interest of the public.
Adoke (SAN) had responded in September 2010 to some of the allegations in Melaye’s letter. For instance, Adoke (SAN) explained the decision of Federal Government in the US$180 million Halliburton bribery scam thus: “we have been following the letters of the law to do what we are doing.
Let me tell you that in the Halliburton case in which many of you were not informed and started insulting us, without taking cognizance of what we were doing, if we had pursued the matter in court under the money laundering act, we would have got only N250, 000. But here, we got N4billion and it came at no cost to the government of Nigeria. And all the monies that we used in investigating, junketing from one country to another to get evidence were returned by Julius Berger.
“Until the weakness of this law is refocused, until we amend the law to bring it in term with reality, it is better for us to go by way of international best practice as it is done in America and other countries of the world whereby restitution is emphasized more than jail sentences.
“This is because when you jail them and you do not get anything in return from them, they will come back from jail and continue to use the money of corruption to oppress the society.
“But when they are made to pay three times or five times of the money involved, then it is better for the society because we can re-channel those monies to our infrastructural development,” he said. On the Vaswani Brothers, Adoke (SAN) had also explained: “in the case of Vaswanis, there were three judgments obtained in court against the Federal Government.
On the strength of those judgments, their solicitor in the case, Chief Kanu Agabi (SAN), one time attorney-general of this country, wrote to complain to the President of this country to say that these were the judgments that were entered against the Federal Government and that EFCC had not appealed against it and these were the declarations made by the court.
“Would you expect me as the attorney general of the federation not to obey court order. So if I obey, how does that mean that the Vaswani Brothers have given me monies to obey the court orders.
You press are so funny. Are you not aware that the court awarded money as damages in the sum of N10million against the EFCC for malicious prosecution of the Vaswanis? “All they were saying was that the Attorney- General collected monies to free the Vaswani Brothers. Who the hell are the Vaswani Brothers? If they run foul of the law, I will prosecute them.
But I will not just play to the gallery because I want to be a hero. I wont play to the gallery because I hold a very sensitive office and I have to balance and protect the interest of every Nigerian and those who do businesses in Nigeria irrespective of their nationalities,” he added.
Adoke said he could have kept quiet like all his predecessors over all the allegations against him but that he wanted to show to the whole world that while some public servants could be corrupt, not all are bad and that the fact that constitution guarantees freedom of expression, the liberty never extended to defaming selfless government officials like himself.
