The conviction of John Yakubu Yusufu, a former Accountant at the Police Pensions Office for his role in the theft of N39bn of Police Pension funds has generated a lot of condemnation for the judicial system and the judicial officers of our country. The punishment meted out to Mr Yusufu is rightly seen as a mere slap on the wrist and a mockery of the Federal Government's much trumpeted fight against corruption. Many people believe corruption in the judiciary has led to uneven handing out of punishments as poor criminals are ruthlessly made to face the full wrath of the law while rich criminals are barely punished.

In light of this, Justice Abubakar Talba has been called a lot of names and is perceived to have been compromised. Many wonder why he had to exercise the discretion afforded him in Section 309 of the Penal Code under which the accused was sentenced.

"Whoever commits criminal misappropriation
shall be punished with imprisonment
for a term which may extend to two
years or with a fine or both.”

Justice Abubakar chose to let the accused off the hook by offering him an option to pay the fine.


It must be said that it was a curious and strange decision by the Judge to allow himself be swayed by the Allocutus of the accused's lawyer. Appeals to the judge to be lenient due to the accused's health, his aged parents, young children and people he supports should have been considered side by side with the well documented sufferings of old Nigerian pensioners. One of the reasons a court may impose a sentence on an accused person is to prevent crime by deterring the offender and other persons from commiting similar offences. It is indeed hard to see how this punishment would deter other persons from plundering national wealth like the Yusufu did.

However, by focusing on why the judge used the discretion he was open to using as clearly stated under Section 309 of the Penal Code, we leave out one important element and I believe we allow ourselves to be once again taken for a ride by the establishment who do not demonstrate any sincerity in fighting graft. Under the same Penal Code, there are a couple more sections under which the accused could have been brought to trial. Let us look at Section 311 of the Penal Code --


“Whoever, being in any manner
entrusted with property or with any
dominion over property, dishonestly
misappropriates or converts that
property to his own use or disposes
of that property in violation of any
direction of law prescribing the mode
in which such trust is to be
discharged or of any legal contract
express or implied, which he has
made touching the discharge of such
trust, or wilfully suffers any other
person so to do, commits criminal
breach of trust.”

Section 312 which is the punishment section states -

"Whoever commits criminal breach
of trust shall be punished with
imprisonment for a term which may
extend to seven years or with fine or
with both.”


Another section under which the accused could have been brought to book but which was overlooked by the EFCC is Section 315 which states that -

“Whoever, being in
any manner entrusted with property
or with any dominion over property
in his capacity as a public servant
or in the way of his business as a
banker, factor, broker, legal
practitioner or agent, commits
criminal breach of trust in respect of
that property, shall be punished with
imprisonment for a term which may
extend to fourteen years and shall
also be liable to a fine.”

Now, one wonders why the EFCC didn't add these sections to the charge. I don't think the lawyers aren't good enough. Far from that. EFCC's usual lawyer is a Senior Advocate, Mr Rotimi Jacobs (who I learned was close to tears in the court after the sentence was read). I would assume a lawyer of his calibre knows his left from right so what went wrong?

Well, I have a theory. A federal judge once accused the EFCC of deliberately presenting shoddy and poorly argued cases. Personally,I've always regarded the EFCC as nothing but another corrupt government agency; a charade. It beats me that a corruption fighting agency filled with prosecutorial lawyers with varied experience would be so careless about a case of this magnitude. I don't know about you but I see beneath the charade. I'm aware they have 'vowed' to appeal so they can further hide their ineptitude. Its impossible for the EFCC to bring fresh charges on appeal so basically their planned appeal is to contest solely the propriety of the trial judge using his discretion to let good old Yusufu off the hook with the fine option. Basically, they want the man to serve his two years in prison when they could have done a better job and put the man away for 14 years.

I'm not deceived.