Five top government prosecutors who are helping the government prosecute corruption cases are about to be sacked by the Federal Government over alleged conflict of interest.
Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN)
Five Senior Advocates of Nigeria who are in the employ of the Federal Government will soon be booted out after they were said to have conflict of interest in the fight against corruption.
Also, the Federal Government is currently investigating its team of special prosecutors to fish out those who may be operating with conflict of interest. The five Senior Advocates of Nigeria out of the 20 on the team are said to have been found culpable, according to a preliminary random check, said a source in the Federal Ministry of Justice.
The team of special Federal Government’s 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.
According to Punch, 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).
One of the Federal Government’s leading prosecutor, Mr. Charles Adeogu-Phillips was last week sacked by the AGF. Speaking through his spokesperson, Mr. Salihu Isah, the AGF said Adeogun-Phillips was sacked over allegation of conflict of interest.
Adeogun-Phillips has denied the allegation of conflict of interest.
“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.
Interestingly, it has been revealed 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, according to Punch.
“Unfortunately, none of them gave any indication that they were handling such high-profile cases; otherwise, they would have been dropped immediately.
“It is a clear case of conflict of interest when the Federal Government engaged them to handle high-profile corruption cases and they were found to be defending similar high-profile suspects being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and other government agencies.
“The danger is that there are a lot of strategic meetings the prosecutors have with the NPCC.
“Some of the strategies require collaboration with other agencies. So, it is likely that some lawyers, who are part of the prosecutors’ team and also defending some of these high-profile suspects, will have access to privileged information which they can use to the benefit of the suspects they are defending.
“From that, you can see where the issue of conflict of interest arises.
“Through some preliminary random checks, at least, five of the SANs have been found to be handling such cases that put them in a position of such conflict of interest.
“There are some of the SANs who are defending a former governor and other high-profile suspects.” the source revealed.
The source added, “I can’t say exactly when those lawyers will be dropped because the full investigation is just about to begin.
“The investigation is expected to yield more discoveries. So, at the end of the day, we may have more than five lawyers who will be dropped from the team.”
Speaking on the investigation, Sunday, Isah, who is the spokesperson for both the AGF and the NPCC, said, “The process is ongoing, though we have not got to the stage of dropping any lawyer.
“We are going to do background checks on all the lawyers as part of our investigation.”
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