Corruption Cases: FG To Sack Five SANs As Prosecutors

The Federal Government is currently investigating its team of special prosecutors to fish out those who may be operating with conflict of interest.Five Senior Advocates of Nigeria out of the 20 on the

 team are said to be have been found culpable, according to a preliminary random check, said a source in the Federal Ministry of Justice.The team of special prosecutors comprises 80 lawyers, mostly in private practice, and those drawn from the Federal Ministry of Justice.The 80 lawyers are grouped into 20 sub-teams with each led by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.The National Prosecution Coordination Committee, which oversees the activities of the prosecutors’ team and assigns cases to the prosecutors, is headed by the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN).Among the high-profile cases currently being coordinated by the NPCC and prosecuted through its prosecutors, are the corruption cases involving judges and top court officials.Last week, the AGF, through his spokesperson, Mr. Salihu Isah, said he sacked Mr. Charles Adeogun-Phillips as the lead prosecuting counsel, handling the trial of a Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Sylvester Ngwuta, over allegation of conflict of interest.Though Adeogun-Phillips, who was a member of the special prosecutors under the watch of the NPCC, denied the allegation of conflict of interest, Isah, who is also the spokesperson for the NPCC, had said more lawyers found to be culpable for a similar reason, would be dropped from the team.“As it presently stands, the committee plans to carry out a critical surgery on the present composition of the entire prosecution team to weed out those with question marks around them, because they have been informed beforehand that anyone found wanting would be eased out since it is a continuous process,” Isah had said in his statement on February 12.Speaking with our correspondent on Sunday, a source said some preliminary checks had shown that five of the SANs were found to be handling cases against the interest of the government in some high-profile corruption cases.The source said all the private lawyers on the team were all given a form when they were newly engaged to indicate the high-profile criminal cases in which they were acting as defence lawyers.The source stated, “Unfortunately, none of them gave any indication that they were handling such high-profile cases; otherwise, they would have been dropped immediately.
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