HIGHLIGHT
Hamza Al-Mustapha has opened up about his possession of a secret letter linked to the death of Kudirat Abiola.
Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (rtd)
The former Chief Security Officer (CSO) to late Gen. Sani Abacha, Major Al-Mustapha (rtd) has revealed that he has a letter in his possession that will assist the Supreme Court Judges in the Kudirat Abiola murder case being brought against him by the Lagos state government.
Al-Mustapha in an interview with TV 360, said from the moment his boss died, charges were contrived and proffered against him as an attempt to nail him. This is even as he said the option to deal with him was to ‘’elongate his torture till he perishes naturally.
Al-Mustapha said that the letter in his possession, purportedly written by the Special Investigation Panel (SIP) will shed more light on what went wrong in the past and help set the record straight.
It will be recalled that Al-Mustapha was convicted of the murder of Mrs. Kudirat Abiola by the High Court of Lagos State per Justice M.A. Dada on the 30th of January 2012 and sentenced to die by hanging.
He appealed to the Lagos Division of the Court of Appeal and after complying with the procedures of appeal, he was heard and judgment was delivered by the Appeal Court setting aside the conviction and reversing the sentence of death by hanging.
Lagos State Government (LASG) initially, appeared satisfied with the judgment of the Court of Appeal but after due political consideration it decided to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Because LASG was out of time within which to appeal, not having lodged its notice of Appeal within 30 days as prescribed by law, it brought an application sometime in March 2014, for (a) extension of time within which to apply for leave to appeal against the judgment of the Court of Appeal, (b) leave to appeal therefrom and (c) extension of time to file Notice of Appeal. LASG dragged its feet on the application and failed to get it listed until our client (Al- Mustapha) requested that we i.e his counsel petition the CJN for a determination of that application for leave to appeal. This we did and the Supreme Court (SC) eventually fixed the 12th of January 2017 for hearing of the LASG application as described.
He further explained that there are facts of all what was sponsored against him in the book.
This revelation maybe against the backdrop of Lagos state government’s leave to appeal the conviction and reversing his death by hanging handed out on Almustapha by Justice M.A Dauda on January 30, 2012.
According to his lawyer, Mr Joseph Dauda, SAN, the ex-CSO had asked that the CJN be petitioned to determine the application for leave to appeal brought by LASG.
Subsequently, on January 12, 2017, when LASG lawyer moved for the leave, Al Mustapha’s counsel did not kick against it, thus prompting the Supreme Court presided over by the Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen, to direct the state to file their notice of appeal within 30 days of the date of the grant of the application.
The ruling followed an application that was moved on behalf of the state by Mrs Osunsanya Oluwayemisi, a Senior State Counsel in the Lagos Ministry of Justice.
