Lead counsel of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in the alleged Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) currency scan, Mr Rotimi Jacobs, on Tuesday said the defence counsel was scuttling further trial of the accused persons.
Jacobs made the remark while addressing journalists after further hearing was grounded due to the inability of the defence counsel to serve process.
He said it was a situation in which the defence counsel, whose clients were refused bail, had a dirty gameplan to ensure that the applications slated for the day were not heard.
“Their gameplan is to scuttle further trial of the case and they have successfully done that.
“The judge directed us at Monday’s hearing that everyone should file his process that day, but the defence counsel did not, this was contrary to our agreement and court’s order.
“We were supposed to have been calling our witnesses since the last three weeks, but they started filing series of applications to ensure that the trial did not commence.
“Our witnesses are ready to start giving evidence, but they are trying to block those witnesses. So, we’ll now have to wait till October.
“Their strategy is that the matter must not go ahead before these current judges, they want to wait for the appeal court to decide,” Jacobs said.
He said there was no amount of reform that could sanitise the system.
According to him, the defence counsel has observed that the suspects don’t have a good case, and hence, have refused to change their habits of stalling trials through frivolous applications.
He, however, stated that the truth would eventually prevail, no matter the delay.
In his argument, Mr Olalekan Ojo, one of the defence counsel, debunked the accusation made by the prosecution, referring to it as ‘most unwarranted and unnecessary’.
“There is no diligent defence counsel that will fail to raise the kind of objection that we raised, except the defence that is indifferent to the success of his client.
“What we simply asked the judge to do is to disqualify himself in this case, because we don’t trust him– based on his pronouncement.
“If this amounts to scuttling trial, so be it,” Ojo stressed.
