The panel, led by Justice Joseph O.K. Oyewole, gave the EFCC instructions on Friday to use alternative methods to serve Bello’s appeal procedures.
The hearing of the motion on notice was scheduled for May 20 by the appeal court.
The EFCC chairman was ordered to appear before the Kogi State High Court in Lokoja on May 13 in order to provide justification for not being sent to prison for disregarding the court’s instructions, after the contempt proceedings.
He then requested a stay of the proceedings and filed an appeal against the court’s decision.
A contempt charge has been brought against the EFCC chairman for executing “some acts upon which they (the EFCC) have been restrained” by the court on February 9, 2024, while the substantive originating motion is being decided.
In a decision in the case of HCL/68M/2024 and HCL/190M/2024, Justice I. A. Jamil ruled that the EFCC had violated the order, which was in effect at the time the act was performed, by carrying out the aforementioned act. The respondent’s action is tantamount to contempt.
On April 17, 2024, at 8 a.m., EFCC agents besieged the home of Alhaji Yahaya Bello, the outgoing governor of Kogi State, in an attempt to arrest him in defiance of a court order prohibiting them from doing so while the originating motion was being decided.
Justice Jamil’s ruling was based on a motion ex-parte that Yahaya Bello filed through M.S. Yusuf, his attorney, asking the court to issue and serve a Form 49 Notice to the respondent, the chairman of the EFCC, asking him to explain why he shouldn’t be subject to an order of committal.
