N2bn fraud: Court nullifies commission’s report on Mua’zu

Judge, Justice Mohammed Ibrahim Zango, has nullified the Judicial Commission of Inquiry report on former Governor Adamu Mu’azu.
Mu’azu was alleged to have embezzled N2 billion while in office between 1999 and 2007.
The commission set up by Governor Isa Yuguda to investigate Mu’azu’s administration accused the former governor of corrupt practices. Yuguda, therefore, asked Mu’azu to refund N2 billion to government’s coffer.
The governor also barred Mu’azu from holding public office for 10 years. But on February 11, Mu’azu sued Yuguda, the Bauchi State Government, the Commissioner for Justice, the Judicial Commission of Inquiry and Justice Bitrus Sanga, who presided over the commission, and asked the court to declare the indictment illegal, claiming that he was not given fair hearing.
Before he delivered the judgement yesterday, Zango struck out the name of Sanga as the fifth defendant as requested by Mu’azu’s counsel, Mr. Nasirun Balan Malam.
Delivering the judgement, Zango said the commission’s report on the management of some ministries, parastatals and extra-ministerial departments of public service of Bauchi State was no longer alive and of no legal effect whatsoever on the plaintiff.
He said: “In so far as the White Paper gazette by the Bauchi State Government contained in the extra-ordinary gazette Number 3 of November 12, 2009 based on the report of the commission, the White Paper cannot stand.
“It is further declared that all forms of indictment inform of recommendations and government position on same as they relate to the plaintiff cannot stand and they are of no legal effect as they relate to the plaintiff, and the indictments contained in the report and the government White Paper are hereby set aside, and ordered that all the steps legal and other wise already taken by the defendants against the plaintiff are hereby set aside.”