A former minister of state for the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Jumoke Akinjide, standing trial over alleged fraud of N650 million, has disowned the statements she allegedly made to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in 2016.
Her lawyer, Mr. Olusegun Williams, told a Federal High Court in Lagos yesterday that the statements were made under duress. Contending that the court should not allow the statements to be tendered as evidence, William urged the court to order a trial-within-trial to test the involuntariness of the statements. Akinjide’s co-defendants, Senator Ayo Adeseun and Olanrewaju Otiti, also disowned their own statements.
Their lawyers, Mr. Michael Lana and Akinola Oladeji, joined William to argue that their clients’ statements were obtained under duress. “The third defendant also made statements to the EFCC and we shall be contending that the statements were made under inducement and subsequently, threat of incarceration. “I will therefore align myself with the position of my learned colleagues for the second and third defendants,” Oladeji told Justice Muslim Hassan.
Following the contention by the defence lawyers, the judge ordered a trial-within-trial. Akinjide, Adeseun and Otiti are being tried on 24 charges of money laundering. The EFCC accused them of collecting N650 million from a former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani AlisonMadueke, in the build-up to the 2015 general elections. It claimed that they ought to have “reasonably known that the money formed part of proceeds of an unlawful act,” adding that they handled it without going through any financial institution in contravention of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act. It said they acted contrary to Section 18(a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2012, and were liable to punishment under Section 15(3) and 4 of the same Act.
