A FEDERAL High Court in Lagos has dismissed a fraud case worth N8.5 against the former director-general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Patrick Akpobolokemi.
The court discharged and acquitted Akpobolokemi of the case brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Monday, April 22.
The trial judge, Ayokunle Faji, dismissed the case while ruling on a no-case submission he and four other defendants filed in a 22-count charge against them.
Akpobolokemi was arraigned before the court alongside Emmanuel Atewe, a retired Major-General and the former Commander of the Joint Task Force Operation Pulo Shield, with two other employees of the agency, Kime Engonzu and Josphine Otuaga.
Faji resolved that the EFCC had not produced a prima facie (sufficient evidence) case against Akpobolokemi and Josephine Otuaga, leading to their discharge and acquittal.
However, the judge decided that the second defendant, Atewe, and the third defendant, Kime Engonzu, a staff member of NIMASA, had to open their defence because they had a case to answer in counts 12 to 22 of the charge.
In his ruling, the judge stated that not a single piece of evidence presented by the prosecution connected Akpobolokemi and the fourth defendant to the offences they were accused of.
In a no-case submission, Akpobolokemi’s lawyers, Joseph Nwobike (SAN) and Collins Ogbonna, begged for Akpobolokemi’s acquittal before he could offer a defence.
The lawyers said that despite all the witnesses and evidence the prosecution had presented, it could not connect him to the alleged crimes.
The defendants are being prosecuted for an updated 22-count allegation which relates to conspiracy, conversion, and theft.
One of the counts reads: “That you, Patrick Ziadeke Akpobolokemi, Major General Emmanuel Atewe, Kime Engozu, and Josphine Otuaga sometime in 2014, in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this court, with intent to defraud, conspired amongst yourselves to commit an offence to wit: conversion of the sum of N8,537,586,798.58 property of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 18 (a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act 2012 and punishable under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.”
Their trial had started when they entered a plea of “not guilty” to the allegations.
Following the prosecution’s case, each defendant chose to submit a no-case submission.
The ICIR, in an investigation published on Saturday, April 13, named Akpobolokemi as one of the actors in a feud that degenerated and led to the death of 17 soldiers in the Okuama community in Ughelli South LGA of Delta on March 14.
According to the report, a feud between an illegal oil bunker, Endurance Okodeh alias Amangbein and a sophisticated cartel of illegal oil bunkers worsened and caused the soldiers’ killing.
Findings unmasked how the leader of the cartel, ex-militant leader Government Ekpemukpolo alias Tompolo who operates a private security company, in a bid for total control of the creeks of Niger Delta, earlier warned Amangbein, who is an ally of a sitting governor in one of the Niger-Delta states, to stay off illegal oil business, a development the latter saw as oppression.
Amangbein, a known ex-militant, hails from the Igbomotoru community in Bayelsa’s Southern Ijaw Local Government Area (LGA).
He is also a leading voice against Tompolo and Akpobolokemi in the creek business and the Okuama/Okoloba land dispute.
The former NIMASA chief allegedly built a mansion in the disputed land between Okuama and Okoloba communities. The building is said to be the genesis of the debacle that led to the soldiers’ killing.
A reporter with the ICIR
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