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Supreme Court revokes bail granted Fred Ajudua in alleged $1.04m fraud case
The Supreme Court has ordered that Lagos socialite, Fred Ajudua should be returned to prison custody preparatory to the resumption of his trial in relation to a $1,043,000 fraud case brought against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
A five-member panel of the apex court issued the order in a unanimous judgment delivered on Friday in an appeal, marked: SC/CR/51/2019 filed in the name of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, FRN, by the EFCC, with Ajudua as the sole respondent.
In the lead judgment by Justice Chioma Nwosu-Iheme, the apex court revoked the bail granted to Ajudua by the Court of Appeal in Lagos in a judgment delivered on December 10, 2018.
Justice Nwosu-Iheme held that the Court of Appeal had no jurisdiction to grant the bail it granted Ajudua in the December 10, 2018 judgment having found incompetent the brief of argument filed in Ajudua’s appeal against a July 5, 2018 ruling by Justice Mojisola Dada of the HIgh of Lagos State, Ikeja, rejecting his request for pre-trial bail.
The judge further held that, having found that Ajudua’s brief of argument was incompetent and proceeded to strike it out, the Court of Appeal was wrong to have still considered the incompetent brief and granted the appellant’s prayer for pre-trial bail.
She said: “It is crystal clear that the lower court was on all fours with the law when it declared the appellant’s brief of argument incompetent and struck it out.
“At that point, the appellant’s (Ajudua’s) appeal was extinguished. There was therefore, nothing more to consider in that appeal. The lower court, at that point, had no jurisdiction to proceed further. It had become functus officio.”
Justice Nwosu-Iheme held that the action of the lower court, in proceeding to consider the arguments canvassed in the brief of argument it earlier found to be incompetent, was an exercise in futility and a complete nullity.
She added: “Since the lower court had no jurisdiction to consider other issues canvassed in the brief of argument, which it had declared incompetent and struck out, it would amount to an academic exercise to delve into any other issue in the appeal.