Former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen will on Tuesday, 20th August 2024, at the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division resume his legal battle against the judgment of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) which ordered his removal from office in 2019.
In the appeal, filed in April 2019, the former CJN is praying the appellate Court to void and set aside the CCT judgment delivered against him on April 18, 2019, on various grounds.
In his appeal marked CA/ABJ/375 & 376 & 377/2019, Justice Onnoghen through his lead counsel, Chief Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN, is asking the Appeal Court to quash his conviction primarily on ground of lack of jurisdiction, bias and absence of fair hearing.
A notice for hearing of the appeal which has Onnoghen as the appellant and the Federal Republic of Nigeria as the sole respondent reads, “Please take notice that the above matter is listed for hearing on Tuesday, the 20th day of August, 2024 at 9 o clock in Court Appeal, Abuja Division. Please take note that this serves as a hearing notice”.
The CCT had, in 2019 convicted Onnoghen in all the six-count charges bordering on breach of Code of Conduct for Public Officers brought against him by the federal government while in office as head of the country’s judiciary.
In the lead judgment delivered by the Chairman of the CCT, Danladi Yakubu Umar, he had ordered the immediate removal of Onnoghen from office as the CJN.
The Tribunal had also stripped him of all offices earlier occupied among which were the Chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC) and also the chairmanship of the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC).
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The tribunal also ordered the forfeiture of his five bank accounts and the money in the accounts which Onnoghen did not declare in his asset declaration form submitted to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), an agency of the Federal Government.
Although Onnoghen had been on suspension since January 25, 2019, and had resigned on April 4, the tribunal nonetheless ordered his removal from office as the Chief Justice of Nigeria and also as the chairman of both the National Judicial Council and the Federal Judicial Service Commission.
However, dissatisfied with the CCT decision, Onnoghen in 2019 approached the Court of Appeal in Abuja with 16 grounds on why his conviction by the Tribunal should be quashed.
Among others, he maintained that the Danladi Umar-led CCT panel erred in law and occasioned a miscarriage of justice against him, when it failed to decline jurisdiction to entertain the six-count charge preferred against him.
He contended that the CCT Chairman ought to have recused himself from presiding over his trial.
Onnoghen is praying to the appellate court for an order setting aside his conviction as well as quashing the order for forfeiture of his assets and to discharge and acquit him of all the charges levelled against him.
Listing some of the particulars of error in the CCT’s verdict, Onnoghen argued that he was a judicial officer at the time the charges were filed against him on January 11, 2019 and as such cannot be subjected to the jurisdiction of the lower tribunal.
While submitting that, it is only the NJC that has the power to discipline him for misconduct and not the lower tribunal Onnoghen said, “The lower tribunal had in the case of FRN V. Sylvester Nwali Nguta in charge No: CCT/ABJ/01/2017 delivered on 9th January 2018, affirmed the position of the Court in FRN Nganjiwa v. FRN and dismissed the charges and acquitted and discharged Justice Ngwuta being a Judicial Officer subject only to the discipline of the National Judicial Council.
“The lower tribunal has no jurisdiction over serving judicial officers such as the appellant, save the National Judicial Council.
“The lower tribunal erred In law when it dismissed the Appellant’s Application seeking the chairman to recuse himself from further proceedings on the ground of real likelihood of bias and thus occasioned a miscarriage of justice.
“The Appellant has alleged that the chairman of the lower tribunal is biased towards him as a result of open remarks in the tribunal as well as the manner in which the proceedings was being conducted.”
Contrary to the CCT finding, Onnoghen, said he did not admit the fact of non-declaration of Assets from 2005 as the Justice of the Supreme Court, adding that he only stated that he did not declare in 2009 as required because he forgot.
Onnoghen challenged the order for the confiscation of his assets on the grounds that the assets were legitimately acquired, as against the provisions of paragraph three of section 23 of the CCB Act which only permits the seizure of such assets “if they were acquired by fraud.”
He faulted the failure of the prosecution to present the petitioner, Denis Aghanya, before the tribunal whose petition led to the charges against him and maintained that all the allegations brought against him “constitute no offence and should therefore not have formed the basis for his conviction”.
The former CJN asked the Court of Appeal to hold that the CCT lacks the jurisdiction to entertain the case and that its Chairman ought to have recused itself from the proceedings.
Onnoghen therefore applied for an order setting aside his conviction and another one setting aside the order for forfeiture of his assets made by the Tribunal as well as to discharge and acquit him from the charges.
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