By Naomi Douglas
The Federal High Court sitting in Abuja yesterday granted leave to a former Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Andrew Yakubu, to travel to the United Kingdom for three weeks to enable him to continue his medical treatment.
Yakubu is standing trial over alleged non declaration of assets. The defendant through his counsel, Ahmed Raji SAN had asked the court for the release his passport to allow him travel for medical checkup.
His application was not opposed by the prosecuting counsel, Ben Ikani, but urged the court to release the passport to the defendant’s counsel.
In his ruling on the application, the trial judge, Justice Ahmed Mohammed, adopted the suggestion by Ikani and also ordered that the defendant’s surety must depose to an affidavit of liability if the ex-NNPC GMD failed to return to Nigeria to attend his trial.
The court later adjourned till July 6. Operatives of the EFCC had recovered the sum of $9.7m and £74,000 stashed in a huge fireproof safe in a house belonging to Yakubu in a slum in Kaduna.
The sums of foreign currencies, which were the subject of the charges instituted against Yakubu amounted to about N3bn.
The prosecution had on May 9 called its first witness, Tasiu Abubakar, who narrated to the court how the the sums of $9,772,800 and £74,000 were recovered from Yakubu’s house in Kanduna.
Abubakar, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, on secondment to the EFCC, said he was part of a team of investigators that recovered a safe containing the money in a house in Sabo-Tasha, Kaduna allegedly owned by Yakubu.
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