By Baron Ike
Former governor of Adamawa State Bala James Ngillari has been sentenced five years in jail without an option of fine over corruption-related cases by a high court in the state capital.
Justice Nathan Musa who presided over the case handed down the sentence on Monday, March 6.
Justice Musa in the 75-minute long ruling found Ngilari guilty of four charges and discharged him on one, which bordered on conspiracy.
The judge also discharged and acquitted former Secretary to the State Government, Ibrahim AndrewWaliya and the Commissioner for Finance,Sanda Jonathan Lamurde, who were second and third defendants in the case.
Ngilari, charged on September 21, 2016, will now have the choice of picking which prison to serve his sentence in.
At press time, there were still no indication of his going to appeal but sources close to the former governor said appeal was inevitable.
Ngillari was arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC)and arraigned before the Adamawa State High Court on a 19-count charge case bordering on fraudulent award of contract worth over N167 million.
He was granted a N1 million bail by Justice Musa on Thursday, September 22, 2016.
The former governor was also asked to provide one surety who must own a landed property in Yola, Adamawa State capital.
The surety, the court said, must submit an affidavit of means to the court registrar before his release.
The matter was adjourned to Monday, October 10, for commencement of trial.
Meanwhile,A former Plateau State governor, Joshua Dariye has again lost his bid to stop his trial in the N1.162 billion fraud preferred against him by the EFCC.
Justice AdebukolaBanjoko of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Gudu, Abuja, on March 6, threw out his motion seeking for his lordship to be disqualified from the trial.
Dariye, who is facing a 23-count charge for allegedly diverting the state’s Ecological Fund to private companies including Ebenezer Retnan Ventures and Pinnacle Communications Limited, had in January lost in a similar bid, having applied to Justice U.I. Bello, the Chief Judge, CJ of the FCT High Court, accusing the trial judge of “manifest and undisguised bias”, and seeking for the case file to be transferred to another judge. The CJ threw out the application and ordered Dariye to go and continue with his trial before the judge as his allegation of bias was “baseless”.
At the time Dariye sent his letter to the CJ, dated December 13, 2016 his defence counsel, G.S. Pwul, also brought two motions to the court, one of which was the one asking the trial judge to “disqualify” his lordship from the case.
He had also applied to the court, seeking for the recall of two principal witnesses, Musa Sunday, an EFCC operative who was cross-examined by both the prosecution and defence on January 25, 2016 and Peter Clark, a retired detective constable with the United Kingdom, UK Metropolitan Police, who was cross-examined by both counsels on May 9, 2016. At the last sitting on March 2, 2017 Pwul, while arguing the applications, contended that it was necessary to recall the witnesses “in relation to new evidence”.