By Ebere Agozie
Nigeria’s Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN has indicated that criminals may be behind attempt to search the residence of Supreme Court Justice, Mary Odili on Friday.
Malami said this while denying culpability in the siege and attempt to search the resident of the Supreme Court Judge on Saturday in a statement by Dr Umar Gwandu, his Special Assistant on Media and Public Relations.
The Attorney General decried what he described as fabrications and concocted lies to link him to the controversies over the search of the residence of Justice Odili.
He said the clarification to debunk the mischievous publication became imperative in view of the media hype and the dimension the story was taking.
“It is important to set the records straight that as the Chief Law Officer of the Federation, Malami will not stoop so low as to be associated with an apparent in-elegant and nasty court process on the strength of which the purported search warrant was procured.
“The media reports on the issue depict processes too untidy to ever emanate from the office of the Attorney General of the Federation.
“The public need to know that there was nothing called `Joint Panel Recovery’, under the Ministry of Justice, what we have is `Assets Recovery and Management Unit’, the mandate of which does not include sting operations’’.
He said that numerous incongruities in the documents being circulated in relation to the saga reveal traces of criminal actions with particular regards to the name, as contained on the purported letter headed paper: `Ghost Account for Local Whistle Blowers & Assets Tax Recovery Panel’;
“The ambiguous reference to `Ministry of Justice’ without clarifying as to whether it is Federal or State Ministry and of which state;
“The claimed office address which was revealed by the letter headed paper which is not the address of the Federal Ministry of Justice, and the email address used on the letter.
“All these deductions would have assisted a discerning mind to arrive at a reasonable conclusion of criminal undertones associated with the court process on the basis of which the purported search warrant was procured’’.
Gwandu said that the office of the Attorney General had since reached out to the relevant authorities for an intensified wider investigation on the matter for necessary action that would lead to the prosecution of anyone involved in the matter.
This is in view of the fact that the only names on record from the process filed in court are a purported police officer who claimed to be “O/C Assets Recovery Team” and one Aliyu Umar a deponent in the affidavit.
“The claim of the chief magistrate as reported by a section of the media to the effect that he was misled by the office of the attorney general into the issuance of the search warrant was equally forwarded to the relevant investigating agencies.
This is to ascertain the veracity, or otherwise, of the purported association of the Attorney General, or if any officer in the office of the Attorney General is associated with such claimed misrepresentation.