Special Prosecutors To Take Over Saraki’s Forgery Case

The Federal Government in a desperate bid to nail embattled Senate President, Bukola Saraki at all costs, has drafted a specially trained team of prosecutors, headed by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, to prosecute the forgery case instituted against him, his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, and two others.

The team is part of 20 teams of prosecutors, comprising 80 lawyers, who will take charge of high profile criminal cases investigated by law enforcement agencies, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.

According to the Punch each of the teams have four lawyers with a Senior Advocate of Nigeria as the leader.

The identities of the lawyers are yet to be made public. But it was gathered that the Prof. Itse Sagay-led Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption was involved in the training of the special prosecutors. The training, which lasted one month, ended in June.

Sources at the Federal Ministry of Justice in Abuja confirmed to the newspaper yesterday that one of the teams of prosecutors had been assigned the said forgery case. The team will fully take over the forgery case from the Director of Public Prosecutions of the Federation, Mr. Mohammed Diri, when the trial resumes on Monday, a source confirmed.

Sources confirmed that the AGF and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, deliberately assigned the case to the special prosecution team for “efficient prosecution and management of the case”.

The team is said to have been given the liberty by Malami to review the case file “and make necessary adjustments or amendments” where necessary to boost the prospect of a successful prosecution of the case.

The AGF’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Mr. Salihu Isah, confirmed the development and said that the forgery case was one of the high-profile criminal cases that had been assigned to one of the special teams of prosecutors.

“The prosecutors, 80 in all, are constituted into 20 teams. After they were trained, cases have been assigned to the first six and one of the cases is the Saraki’s case that you mentioned,” he said.