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| Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (arrowed) flanked by supporters, after he regained his freedom at the Appeal Court, in Lagos... on Friday. Right is the Late Kudirat Abiola. |
First
child of the late Kudirat Abiola, Lekan Abiola, has expressed
disappointment over Friday’s Appeal Court judgment, which upturned the
death sentence earlier passed on Major Hamza Al-Mustapha and Lateef
Shofolahan, who were accused of masterminding the killing of his mother.
The Court of Appeal sitting in Lagos had
earlier on Friday discharged and acquitted the former Chief Security
Officer to the late Gen. Sani Abacha (Al-Mustapha) and Shofolahan, an
ex-aide to the late Kudirat.
The appellate court had dismissed the
judgment of Justice Mojisola Dada of the Lagos High Court, which
sentenced both men to death by hanging, after accusing the judge of
being “stroked to secure a conviction by all means.”
But the younger Abiola told Saturday PUNCH on Friday that he was “disappointed, but not particularly surprised by the judgement.”
“I pray that God will forgive my mother
and I know that my mum and dad will definitely get justice; maybe not in
Nigeria, but I’m sure that Allah will give them justice where they
are.”
He said, “The Appeal Court only
completed the work of other courts before it that have played roles in
scuttling the family’s quest for justice in this matter. They finished
the job, but they weren’t the ones who started it.
“We had seven or so defendants before
now with confessions of the roles they played in the death of my mother;
there was Mohammed Abacha, Banabas Jabila aka Sgt. Rogers, James
Danbaba, Lateef Shofolahan, Rabo Lawal and others. Everybody said the
role they played; the one who did the shooting; the one who drove; the
one who arranged for the car that was used when they got to Lagos from
Abuja; the people in the room when the order to kill my mother was
given. All the seven started the case, but the Supreme Court started the
whole thing when it said that Mohammed Abacha had no case to answer.”
According to him, the Abiola family
would still have been disappointed even if the death sentence had been
upheld by the Appeal Court.
He said, “One after the other, the cases
were dropped and it was down to the remaining two. Where are the
others? The fact that only two of them were convicted shows the rot in
the judicial system. Even if the court had upheld the death sentence, we
still wouldn’t have got the justice we sought. Already, most of those
involved had been freed.”
Reacting to the assertion that military
officers cannot be liable for crimes committed while carrying out orders
from a superior officer, Abiola said military law also recognised
illegality and had made provisions for such scenarios.
He argued that junior military officers
get punished abroad for criminal offences carried out under direct order
from a superior boss.
He said, “It has been proven that even
in the military, you are not bound by law to obey an illegal order. If a
human being asks you to do something, you have to ask yourself if it’s a
legal order.
“After the World War II, German
officials involved in war crimes, who claimed to be following orders
before an international tribunal in Nuremberg, were found guilty and
hanged.”
Abiola also expressed concern about the
general situation in the country, saying that many Nigerians would be
silently facing a fate similar to that being faced by his family.
He said, “Only God knows how many
Nigerian family members have been killed by the police or the army and
could not get justice. If something like that can happen to my family,
what about other families that people don’t know anything about?
He, however, said that the Abiola family
had accepted the judgment in good fate as Muslims, adding that some
credits should go the “high court judge that passed the initial (death)
sentence on Al-Mustapha and Shofolahan.”
Also, a younger brother to the late MKO
Abiola, Alhaji Mubashiru Abiola, told one of our correspondents that the
judgement came to the Abiola family as a “big surprise.”
Although he declined further comment on
the judgment, Mubashiru said the family would issue a statement on the
issue after a meeting of all members.
Similarly, Kudirat’s daughter, Hafsat
Abiola-Costello, in a text message to one of our correspondents on
Friday, said the family would not want to make any hasty comment on the
appellate court’s decision.
Her text message read, “Hello, the family will release a statement in the next few days. Thanks.”
The judgment of the appellate court came
about 14 years after the appellants were first arraigned in 1999, with
two others, for the murder of Kudurat, wife of the winner of the June
12, 1993 presidential election, Chief MKO Abiola.
In the two separate but unanimous
judgments delivered on Friday, the Justice Amina Augie-led appeal panel
discharged and acquitted al-Mustapha and Shofolahan of the murder
charges for lack of evidence.
Lack of evidence was the same reason the
Supreme Court discharged and acquitted son of the late Head of State,
Mohammed Abacha, from the same case on July 11, 2002.
The fourth person, Rabo Lawal, who was,
during Abacha’s regime, the head of Mobile Police Force Unit in Aso
Rock, was also discharged and acquitted from the case on July 14, 2011,
by Justice Dada in her ruling on a no-case submission, which he (Lawal)
filed after the prosecution closed its case.
The all-female appeal panel held that
both the charges of murder and conspiracy to murder preferred against
the two men by the Lagos State Government were unsubstantiated.
The two other justices on the panel were Rita Pemu, who read the lead judgment, and Fatima Augie.
Pemu described the lower court’s
judgment as “worrisome,” adding that it was based on principles strange
to the nation’s criminal justice system.
“The evidence of the prosecution was so
unreliable that no responsible court will base the conviction of an
accused person on,” she said.
She held that the two star witnesses of
the prosecution (PW2 -Barnabas Jabila aka Sgt. Rogers and PW3, Mohammed
Abdul aka Katako), having recanted their incriminating testimonies, the
evidence given by them could no longer be relied upon.
“I wonder why the learned trial judge did not expunge the testimonies of PW2 and PW3,” Pemu said.
She said despite the evidence given by
Jabila and Abdul, testifying that they were instructed to tell lies
against the appellants, “the learned trial judge refused to concern her
mind with the politics of the case. She allowed herself to be caught in
the web of the conflict.”
Augie said in her supporting judgment, “The 326 pages cannot provide judgment where there is none.”
She said the judgment ought not to be too long “if the case of the prosecution was strong.”
According to Augie, the judgment being
too long, the learned trial judge “strayed” into emotion and left the
content of the matter while dwelling on the “shallow issues.”
She also wondered why the authorities “refused to prosecute Barnabas Jabila, who made a confession to have killed a person.”
On the testimony of the first
prosecution witness, Dr. Ore Falomo, who was MKO Abiola’s personal
physician, Pemu said the evidence given by him was immaterial, having
only alleged that the bullet extracted from the head of the deceased was
“uncommon one,” without any further proof.
Pemu said the bullet was never brought
to court and that no ballistician report was tendered to corroborate
Falomo’s claim that the bullet must have come from the Presidency and
that Kudirat must have been killed by “a fifth columnist in government.”
“These questions are left unanswered by the prosecution,” Pemu said.
She said the incomplete testimony of the
fourth prosecution witness (PW4), Ahmed Fari Yusuf, a retired
Commissioner of Police, “goes to no issue” and as such, all the
statements credited to the appellants, which were tendered through him,
were all immaterial.
She said failure of the prosecution to
present Yusuf for the defence to cross-examine after two
trials-within-trial for 13 months to test the voluntariness of the
statements “was an infraction to the rights of the appellants to fair
hearing.”
As such, the court held that the three statements tendered as Exhibits A5, B1 and A6 had no “evidential value.”
The appellate court held that even if
the appellants had actually committed the alleged crimes, nothing in the
testimonies of all the four prosecution witnesses suggested so.
The court castigated the police for a
“wishy-washy” investigation of the case, adding that the investigation
of the Special Investigative Panel, set up on the case in 1999, was
strange to the nation’s criminal justice system.
Pemu said, “PW2 and PW3 said that they
were coerced to testify against the appellants and the incompleteness of
the evidence of PW4 – all these leave so much to be desired.”
According to Pemu, the investigation
conducted by the SIP on the case was a usurpation of the power of the
police under sections 214 of the constitution as well as under the
provisions of the Police Act.
She said, “The prosecution having failed
to prove its case against the appellants, the appellants are entitled
to being discharged and acquitted.
“Therefore the judgment of Justice Mojisola Dada of the Lagos High Court on January 30, 2012 is hereby set aside.
SUNDAY
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