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Tag: Death Certificate

  • Alleged P&ID scam: EFCC insists Grace Taiga’s death certificate be produced

    Alleged P&ID scam: EFCC insists Grace Taiga’s death certificate be produced

    The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Counsel, Mohammed Hussain, on Wednesday in an FCT High Court insisted that a former director of legal services at the petroleum ministry, Grace Taiga’s death certificate be produced before the court.

    Taiga is standing trial before Justice Olukayode Adeniyi on allegations bordering on bribery in the controversial Gas Supply Processing Agreement (GSPA) between Process and Industrial Development (P&ID) and the Federal Government of Nigeria.

    She was dragged before the court by the EFCC on an amended 13-count charge bordering on bribery, among others.

    The anti-graft commission alleged that Taiga received bribe through her offshore bank account in signing the controversial GPSA

    EFCC further claimed that she violated various laws by entering into the Agreement without prior approval by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and a certificate of no objection to the contract from the Bureau of Public Enterprise (PBE).

    She, however, pleaded not guilty to the allegations preferred against her.

    The deceased was first arraigned on Sept 20, 2019 before the court in the case, marked, FCT/HC/CR/504/19, on an eight-court charge.

    The EFCC first amended the charge against the defendant on Oct. 3, 2020, to 11-count and later further amended it to 13-count on Jan. 10, 2021.

    The prosecution called eight witnesses to testify against the defendant and closed its case on Feb. 27, 2023, then the court directed the defendant to open her defence.

    At the hearing of the case on Nov 4, 2023, however, counsel for Taiga, Daniel Alumun, informed the court that the defendant passed on on August 1, 2023 at a hospital in Abuja.

    Alumun tendered a letter, titled, “Hospital Death Declaration”, from Primus International Super Speciality Hospital, Karu New Extension, Abuja, to notify the court of the demise of Taiga.

    In view of the unfortunate development, the defendant counsel, urged the court to dismiss the charge.

    EFCC counsel however, insisted that a death certificate must be brought before the court by the defence in compliance with the law before the court could dismiss the case.

    Justice Adeniyi then directed that a death certificate be produced before the court.

    He then adjourned the case until today or compliance with the law by the defence.

    When the matter came up today,  the defendant counsel earlier told the court that the death certificate was not ready.

    He prayed the court to allow him more time to get it.

    The prosecuting counsel insisted that the certificate must be brought to the court as stipulated by the law before decision can be taken.

    Justice Adeniyi however,  adjourned until March 6, for further report on the death certificate.

  • My husband’s death certificate showed he died earlier than announced – Odumakin’s wife

    My husband’s death certificate showed he died earlier than announced – Odumakin’s wife

    Dr Joe Okei-Odumakin, wife of late Yinka Odumakin, says her husband died on Friday, April 2, 2021 and not Saturday, April 3, 2021 as earlier reported.

    Okei-Odumakin, a rights activist, in another tribute to her late husband made available to newsmen in Lagos, said it was important to immediately put the record straight in the spirit of truth that Odumakin stood for.

    The tribute is entitled: “Yinka: Basking in the shadow that you cast”.

    The rights activist stressed that due to the principles of truth and saying it as it is, of which her late husband lived for all his adult life, it was important to immediately put the record straight.

    “Now that I am in possession of your death certificate, I can see you passed on at exactly 10.40 p.m. on Good Friday (April 2, 2021) and not in the morning of Saturday, (April 3, 2021) as initially communicated.

    “The medics said his oxygen level was running low but my husband was reaching out for his tab to type out his column.

    “Since no one is permitted in the Critical Care Unit, we had committed you to the care of the best qualified medics at LASUTH and the hand of God, hoping to see you next morning.

    “The medics said they could not fathom how to immediately relay the message of your passage to me directly,” she explained.

    Recounting some of the deceased’s times while he was alive, Okei-Odumakin said her husband was never frugal in spending that “oxygen on his Yoruba earth, his beloved and his Nigeria, his truly beloved”.

    She said that if breath was the currency of life and its legal tender, then her husband spent his breath on causes.

    “My memories are rousing through chains of pains; a sea surge of a romance which sprouted in General Sani Abacha’s detention.

    “My husband was not a criminal, neither was I.

    “ Our `crime’ was standing strong for others as we always have been. We will return to the dingy detention cell in our reminiscences later,” she said.

    Recalling, she questioned: “Who meets and marries from detention at Alagbon? Only Yinka would ask, and only I would say, YES.

    “We were introduced to each other by the most qualified, the most preeminent, and the most decorated of inmate, Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN).

    “Chief said: Yinka, she’s a man’. Yinka married both the man and the woman in me.

    “It was our truest solemnisation of activist matrimony by a revered High Priest of the struggle…with the trench as our altar and the good of our people as our ultimate goal.

    “Yinka, it cannot be goodbye; it is goodnight and see you later on the other side with God.

    “I will bask with reckless abandon in the shadow of your cast. You came, you saw and you conquered,” she eulogised.

    Okei-Odumakin emphasised that she would carry forward the baton in the eternal word of their “leader’’.

    According to her, Nigeria will be saved.

    “Nigeria will be changed and it will become a great nation.

    “Nigeria will work in my lifetime and even in yours as you live on in me, our children and generation yet unborn,’’ the rights activist affirmed.