Embattled politician, Senator Buruji Kashamu, has described the decision of the Federal Government to appeal a court judgment stopping his extradition to the United States of America to answer to drug related charges as mischievous.
The lawmaker, representing Ogun East Senatorial district of Ogun State, said it was wrong for the government to appeal through the Attorney-General of the Federation, when President Muhammadu Buhari had yet to appoint an occupant of the office. It will be recalled that the Federal Government, through the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, had been seeking Kashamu’s extradition to the US for alleged drug-related offences. Kashamu, in a statement by his media aide, Mr. Austin Oniyokor, on Saturday, also accused a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Emeka Ngige, of seeking to divert attention from the “illegalities” of the Attorney-General of the Federation and the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency on the plot to extradite him. The Federal Government, on Friday, appealed the judgement delivered by Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High Court, Lagos, on May 27, upholding the fundamental human rights enforcement suit filed by Kashamu. The government had also appealed another order issued on June 8 by Justice Ibrahim Buba, also of the Federal High Court in Lagos. However, Ngige told the court presided over by Justice Buba on Friday that he had been briefed by the Office of the AGF to handle the matter and that he had also appealed against the ruling of the court made on June 8. This situation, Kashamu described as an attempt by Ngige to rehash an allegation (against him) that had been rejected by British courts and recently by Nigerian courts. Kashamu said: “Emeka Ngige claims that these rejected allegations are the basis of an appeal he has filed against orders and judgments of the Federal High Court. “The mischief is clear because no Notice of Appeal has been served on any party, yet Ngige has released documents to the media which he claims are Notices of Appeal. This is clearly wrong.” He therefore questioned why Ngige and another lawyer, Gboyega Oyewole, would be representing a non-existent AGF, as the Buhari-led administration had yet to appoint a new AGF. He said further: “Contrary to the lies being peddled in the media, information available to us revealed that the two lawyers were not briefed by the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice – at least as of Friday when they appeared in court. “If they say they were, we challenge them to produce the authorisation and evidence of payment made to that effect. We do know that they were hired by Abiodun, who is desperate to get through the back door a mandate he could not get in a free and fair election.” According to Kashamu, Ngige had “evidently” not read the judgments he was interpreting,. stating that: “The court did not merely find that the evidence was not enough; the court positively found that it was another person (not Senator Buruji Kashamu) that committed the offence and proceeded to describe the person in its judgement. It is that person the US authority wants not Senator Kashamu.” The statement further said that the judgement was clearly an obstacle to any further proceedings against Kashamu.
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