the Federal Government is currently
investigating its team of special
prosecutors to fish out those who
may be operating with conflict of
interest.
Five Senior Advocates of Nigeria out
of the 20 on the team are said to be
have been found culpable, according
to a preliminary random check, said a
source in the Federal Ministry of
Justice.
The team of special prosecutors
comprises 80 lawyers, mostly in
private practice, and those drawn
from the Federal Ministry of Justice.
The 80 lawyers are grouped into 20
sub-teams with each led by a Senior
Advocate of Nigeria.
The National Prosecution
Coordination Committee, which
oversees the activities of the
prosecutors’ team and assigns cases
to the prosecutors, is headed by the
Attorney General of the Federation
and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar
Malami (SAN).
Among the high-profile cases
currently being coordinated by the
NPCC and prosecuted through its
prosecutors, are the corruption cases
involving judges and top court
officials.
Last week, the AGF, through his
spokesperson, Mr. Salihu Isah, said
he sacked Mr. Charles Adeogun-
Phillips as the lead prosecuting
counsel, handling the trial of a
Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice
Sylvester Ngwuta, over allegation of
conflict of interest.
Though Adeogun-Phillips, who was a
member of the special prosecutors
under the watch of the NPCC, denied
the allegation of conflict of interest,
Isah, who is also the spokesperson
for the NPCC, had said more lawyers
found to be culpable for a similar
reason, would be dropped from the
team.
“As it presently stands, the
committee plans to carry out a
critical surgery on the present
composition of the entire
prosecution team to weed out those
with question marks around them,
because they have been informed
beforehand that anyone found
wanting would be eased out since it
is a continuous process,” Isah had
said in his statement on February 12.
Speaking with our correspondent on
Sunday, a source said some
preliminary checks had shown that
five of the SANs were found to be
handling cases against the interest
of the government in some high-
profile corruption cases.
The source said all the private
lawyers on the team were all given a
form when they were newly
engaged to indicate the high-profile
criminal cases in which they were
acting as defence lawyers.
The source stated, “Unfortunately,
none of them gave any indication
that they were handling such high-
profile cases; otherwise, they would
have been dropped immediately.
“It is a clear case of conflict of
interest when the Federal
Government engaged them to
handle high-profile corruption cases
and they were found to be
defending similar high-profile
suspects being prosecuted by the
Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission and other government
agencies.
“The danger is that there are a lot of
strategic meetings the prosecutors
have with the NPCC.
“Some of the strategies require
collaboration with other agencies.
So, it is likely that some lawyers,
who are part of the prosecutors’
team and also defending some of
these high-profile suspects, will
have access to privileged
information which they can use to
the benefit of the suspects they are
defending.
“From that, you can see where the
issue of conflict of interest arises.
“Through some preliminary random
checks, at least, five of the SANs have
been found to be handling such
cases that put them in a position of
such conflict of interest.
“There are some of the SANs who are
defending a former governor and
other high-profile suspects.”
Although, the source could not give
an exact time when the culpable
persons would be weeded out of the
team, he said it was expected that
more of such cases of conflict of
interest could be discovered.
The source added, “I can’t say exactly
when those lawyers will be dropped
because the full investigation is just
about to begin.
“The investigation is expected to
yield more discoveries. So, at the
end of the day, we may have more
than five lawyers who will be
dropped from the team.”
When contacted on Sunday, Isah,
who is the spokesperson for both
the AGF and the NPCC, said, “The
process is ongoing, though we have
not got to the stage of dropping any
lawyer.
“We are going to do background
checks on all the lawyers as part of
our investigation.”

http://punchng.com/corruption-cases-fg-to-sack-five-sans-as-prosecutors/