It started in March of 2008, when the EFCC made that fateful decision to arrest Senator Ola. It continued through November 26, 2013, when the Court of Appeal sitting in Jos affirmed the judgment of the lower court awarding millions to Senator Ola. Within that period, it has been a struggle between justice and injustice. Justice prevailed and Senator Ola won again against the EFCC, now in the case, which shall be making the law reports as EFCC vs. Friendly Hotels Limited and Festus Olabode Ola, Appeal No. CA/145/2012.
As a background to this, in 2008, while Senator Ola was in court fighting to claim his electoral mandate to represent Ekiti State at Senate, the political opponents of the Senator induced some officers of the EFCC to pursue Senator Ola with a view to eliminating him as a political contender. In what was a blatant manipulation of outcome in an electoral dispute, the EFCC officers swooped into the Friendly Hotels, in Ado Ekiti, owned by the Senator. The officers disrupted normal hotel business, carted away the computers at the hotel’s business center and arrested the Senator. Their pretext for such a naked show of crude force was that they suspected that cyber scammers were using the hotel’s business center. No single such scammer was ever arrested.
In the 2008 incident, no crime was ever established against the Senator. It was just that he and the manager of the hotel were arrested, ruffled and supposedly scared by the EFCC officers. No crime was ever alleged. Their reason was just to silence him politically. None of the computers taken away from his hotel was found with any incriminating evidence. Indeed, the reversible and inconsistent EFCC wrote him a letter acknowledging that nothing was found on the hotel’s compuetrs. Yet, the EFCC refused to return the computers or to apologize for such a blatant abuse of police power. Despite his mild and gentle qualities, the Senator could not accept such indignity and humiliation unchallenged.
The Senator filed a petition at the Federal High Court to enforce his fundamental rights against the EFCC.
In 2010, the Federal High Court sitting in Jos granted judgment to Senator Ola, finding that the rights of the Senator were blatantly violated by the EFCC. The court awarded Senator Ola a judgment of 50 million naira against the EFCC. That remains the biggest judgment any Nigerian court has awarded against the EFCC for violation of rights. And the arrogant and power-drunk EFCC was not going to take that without retaliating.
The EFCC management and staff took three drastic retaliatory steps against Senator Ola for defeating them in a court of law. Before anything else, the EFCC simply refused to honor the judgment. They refused to pay Senator Olo. As the Senator tried to garnishee the accounts of the EFCC, the officers made the first retaliatory move.
On November 24, 2011, Mr. Lamorde, then the Head of Operations of the EFCC, invited Senator Ola for discussions for the purpose of making payment to him as per the judgment. When the Senator arrived with his Personal Assistant for the meeting as requested by Lamorde, the officers of the EFCC arrested him. They maltreated him. They humiliated him. They denied him his medication. They bundled him into a vehicle and drove him right from the EFCC Abuja office to the airport and flew him to Lagos where they detained him in a cell in their cell. It was in this cell that Senator Ola met me, while I was also detained.
After two weeks of unlawful detention, the EFCC filed false criminal charges against the Senator. After a brief trial, the charges were dismissed by the court in the most devastating judgment ever. The judge declared in unmistakable words that the EFCC had persecuted Senator Ola and suppressed his rights. As a lawyer of over 20 years standing in the bar, I have never directly observed a judgment in which the judge, while delivering a judgment, paused and posed the question: “Why did you charge this man to court when you knew there was absolutely no case against him?” The judge went further to answer his own question, thus: “In my opinion, the only reason is to persecute him and to suppress him”.
While the EFCC officers were tormenting Senator Ola through the criminal justice system, they also went after the judge that delivered judgment in favor of the Senator. They threatened him and filed a petition against him before the National Judicial Council, falsely accusing the judge of bias and prejudice. At the same time the EFCC made the mistake of appealing against the excellent and well-reasoned judgment.
All these measures failed one after another. The criminal charges the EFCC field against the Senator were dismissed preliminarily in a damning judgment against the EFCC. Also, Senator Ola has filed a suit for malicious prosecution against the EFCC and its officers. Further, EFCC’s petition against the judge is baseless and will not get anywhere. It remained the last measure by the EFCC, and that was the appeal it filed against the judgment awarding millions against it. On November 26, 2013, the Court of Appeal upheld the judgment of the lower court. Now the EFCC has to cough up millions to pay Senator Ola.
What happened in these cases is a clear proof that the EFCC is a failed agency. It is dysfunctional and corrupt. In a relentless demonstration of arrogance and impunity, it pursued an innocent man with emotion-laden sense of vendetta and vengeance. In the process, it stumbled and fell at every stage. For instance, if the EFCC had not gone after the Senator with those false charges, it would not have made itself amenable to malicious prosecution suite, which it may lose. And by appealing against a judgment purely out of emotions and sentiments, the EFCC officers have worsened the position of the Commission in this country.
If they had left that judgment at the level of the High Court, the judgment would have amounted to much less in Nigerian legal history. Whereas a judgment of the High Court is not binding on other High Courts, the judgment of the Court of Appeal is binding on all High Courts in Nigeria. Senator Ola’s newly won victory in the Court of Appeal has now set a standard which other high courts must follow, and would now be on law reports with all the adverse record against the EFCC. This is the first time a Nigerian High Court would award such amount in damages against the EFCC. And this is the first time that sort of judgment would be upheld by the Court of Appeal against the EFCC.
There is no doubt that a floodgate has now been opened against the EFCC and their camp would be flooded soon. Many Nigerians have suffered untold hardship in the hands of the EFCC. All these victims can now ride on the solid judgment in the Ola’s case to make claims against the EFCC. In that sense, Senator Ola has indeed made important contributions to the rule of law and justice.
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