A Federal Capital Territory High Court headed by Justice Ishaq Bello, has granted leave to the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission to arraign for trial Aminu Abubakar, the Chairman of the Goodluck Support Group, and Okechukwu Geoffrey for extortion and blackmail.
The GSG is one of the campaign teams of former President Goodluck Jonathan.
The accused persons, who were earlier granted bail in the sum of N15 million and two sureties in like sum, were alleged to have been in possession of some documents relating to some officials of the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources, with the intent to implicate them by publishing and threatening them if they do not part with N50 million.
At the last adjourned hearing on an application filed by the counsel to the accused persons, contesting the jurisdiction of the court to entertain the suit, the trial judge in his ruling averred that throughout the submission of the defence counsel, there was no basis for the charges to be quashed as the prosecution diligently linked them to the offences committed.
The ICPC’s prosecuting counsel, George Lawal, in his submission argued that for the application seeking to quash charges to be considered, the suspects must have been linked with the alleged offences.
Lawal said: “The charge clearly shows where the first accused had a meeting with the officials of the petroleum ministry, where he demanded for the sum of N50 million and even went ahead with threats and even went into a meeting where he collected the sum of N5 million, even writing an undertaking.”
He therefore argued that the issue of quashing the charge was not acceptable.
Having listened to the various submissions, Justice Bello adjourned the matter to October 21, 2015 for trial.
The accused persons are to appear before the court on a three-count charge under the penal code for extortion and conspiracy to extort on the next adjourned date.