Alhaji Yahaya Bello, the immediate former governor of Kogi State, has been the subject of numerous media trials. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, or EFCC, has been requested to stop.

Constitutional attorney and legal activist Wilfred Molokun claimed that the EFCC was conducting a media trial in an effort to apprehend and charge Bello.

He stated that in its eagerness to “persecute, prosecute and humiliate a former governor,” an organization tasked with overseeing the enforcement of all laws pertaining to economic and financial crimes is ridiculously going beyond the letter of the law.

In response to inquiries about the ruling of Justice Isa Jamil Abdullahi of the Kogi State High Court on April 17, 2024, which issued an order prohibiting the EFCC “from continuing to harass, threaten to arrest or detain” Bello based on the criminal charges currently pending before the federal high court in Abuja, Molokun, a lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, made the call.

He emphasized that the Federal High Court trial court judge who is in charge of the case should be given the opportunity to rule on Bello’s application to revoke the arrest warrant, saying that decency and decorum should be the rule of the day. This is because both parties have now sufficiently addressed the court on the subject.

In his opinion, everyone’s behavior, even corporate entities such as the EFCC, should be governed by the law.

Recall that the Federal High Court scheduled a decision on Yahaya Bello’s request to have the arrest warrant issued on April 17, 2024, revoked, to be rendered on May 10.

Bello’s motion was argued on April 23, 2024, before Justice Emeka Nwite by Adeola Adedipe, SAN. The EFCC was strongly opposed by Kemi Pinheiro, SAN.

Adedipe had made the case in his argument that the court should revoke the arrest warrant.

The Senior Advocate argues that the arrest warrant order should be overturned suo motu because it was issued prior to the charge (on its own accord, without any request by the parties involved).

Specifically, because on April 18, the agency requested a substituted serving of its charge bundles and evidence against Bello after the main attorney for the former governor, Abdulwahab Mohammed, SAN, refused to accept the materials in open court.

The senior attorney further contended that, in contrast to Pinheiro’s argument that the ex-governor had to appear in court before any application could be considered because it was a criminal case, the anti-graft agency had filed an application on April 18 following the EFCC’s April 17 warrant of arrest, and the court had approved it.

According to Adedipe, the complainant applied for substituted service on April 18 after the judge had approved an arrest warrant that had been issued on April 17.