The defence lawyer to PDP former National Publicity Secretary Olisa Metuh announced his withdrawal from his client’s case after the suspect took a fall on his way to the dock on Monday by about 9 am.
But the trial judge Okon Abang insisted Emeka Etiaba must go on.
“It will be against all procedure of trial to say I want to continue when my client is lying down and I don’t know whether he is dead or alive,” Etiaba said.
But the judge refused Etiaba’s application to withdraw from the trial, saying “it is an attempt to delay this trial”.
The lawyer though remained in the court, heinsisted he had withdrawn from the case.
He refused to offer further contributions even when asked for by the judge.
Metuh along with his company, Destra Investment Limited, is being prosecuted by the EFCC for the N400m he allegedly received fraudulently from the Office of the National Security Adviser in 2014.
After Metuh’s fall, the judge had to stand down the matter to enable medical officials to attend to the defendant.
The court’s medical officials, whose attention were called after the incident, entered the courtroom at about 9.19am.
They all said Metuh defied the judge’s warning not to go to the dock but to remain seated in his position.
When the judge asked him for his opinion, EFCC’s lawyer Sylvanus Tahir did not oppose the application to stop hearing to enable the defendant to see his doctor.
Justice Okon had sad Metuh was deliberately stalling the case with all the back-and-forth about his health condition.
The justice once insisted the suspect be brought in on a stretcher in some of the past appearances.