After 4 years, ICPC secured conviction, imprisonment of own nominee

A former chairmn of the Kwara Polytechnic Governing Council prosecuted for bribery eventually got justice at the Supreme Court on Friday: 12 years in prison.

Dr. Saadu Alanamu had been convicted at the Kwara High Court earlier. The apex court just upheld the decision after four years of legal battle.

According to a statement by the Spokesperson for ICPC, Mrs., Azuka Ogugua, Alanamu’s conviction was upheld last Friday by the Supreme Court in a virtual unanimous judgment read by Justice Uwani Abba Aji.

Alanamu was nominated in 2017 into the Board of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) when a N5-million bribery allegation surfaced.

The ICPC dropped his nomination, investigated him, and found out he received  N5 million from a contractor as kickback for the award of contracts in the Polytechnic.

Justice Mahmud Abdulgafar then convicted and sentenced him to 12 years imprisonment.

Dissatisfied with the ruling, Alanamu approached the Court of Appeal, urging it to quash the judgment of the trial court.

The appellate court upheld the judgment of the lower court and dismissed Alanamu’s appeal for lack of merit, having listened to the arguments from both the prosecution and defense counsel.

“Still not satisfied with the ruling of the Court of Appeal, the former Governing Council Chairman approached the Supreme Court on four grounds of appeal, to upturn the judgments against him by the trial and appellate court,’ the ICPC said.

“His counsel, Professor Amuda Kanike (SAN) had argued at the Supreme Court that the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000, under which the convict was tried had been purportedly repealed by ICPC Act, 2003.

“He further raised the issue of whether or not the appellant could be validly tried and convicted for different offences under different counts in the same trial based on the same set of facts.

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“In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court struck out all the grounds of appeals as incompetent, misconceived and lacking in merit and accordingly affirmed the conviction and sentencing of Alanamu to 12 years imprisonment based on the same fact handed down to him by the appellate and trial courts.”