Justice Ngwuta earned £50,000, $196,000, N119m — Chief Registrar

The Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court, Mr. Ahmed Saleh, on Thursday, appeared before a Federal High Court in Abuja as the second prosecution witness in the ongoing trial of a Justice of the apex court, Sylvester Ngwuta.

Saleh, who was called by the prosecution to testify on the income of Ngwuta as a Justice of the Supreme Court, said between the time of Ngwuta’s appointment in 2011 and September 2016, a period of five years, the judge had earned a total of £50,000, $196,000, N119m.

Meanwhile, a newly amended charge of 12 counts, comprising money laundering and passport fraud offences, were read to Ngwuta before witnesses started to testify in the trial on Thursday.

The old charge had 16 counts.

The amendment was made by the lead prosecuting counsel, Mrs. Olufemi Fatunde, who took over the case from the former prosecutor, Mr. Charles Adeogun-Phillips, in February.

As alleged in the old set of charges, Ngwuta was accused in some of the amended counts of retaining N35,358,000; $319,596,000 and £25,915 during the raid on his house by the operatives of the Department of State Services between October 7 and 8, 2016.

He was also accused of giving a cumulative of over N400m cash to a building contractor, Nwamba Chukwuebuka, between January 2016 and September 2016 without going through financial institutions in violation of the Money Laundering Act.

He was also accused of passport fraud, among other charges.

Ngwuta pleaded not guilty to all the 12 counts which were variants of the counts in the old charge.

Saleh, who was the second prosecution witness to testify after Ngwuta was re-arraigned on Thursday, said the apex court judge was appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court around June or July 2011.

According to the witness, who was led in evidence by Fatunde, the incomes accruable to Justices of the Supreme Court comprised their salaries and allowances as well as air fares and ‘estacodes’ paid to them when they travelled abroad.

He said Justices of the apex court were also being paid the sum of £10,000 for medical check-up annually, and were entitled to an ‘estacode’ of $1,300 per night whenever they were on a foreign trip.

He said Ngwuta, as a Justice of the apex court, was earning N751,087 as monthly salary and N710,00,000 as other allowances monthly.

He said for the five years period, Ngwuta had earned a cumulative of £50,000 as medical allowances, $196,000 as medical allowances, N8m for medical trips and air fares for conferences abroad and N103m as salaries.

When asked if Justices of the Supreme Court were allowed to do business while still in service, he said, “I know under the Code of Conduct for Judicial Officers, judicial officers are not allowed to engage directly in businesses.”

Under cross-examination, Saleh, however, confirmed that no law barred a Justice of the Supreme Court from owning properties.

Earlier, Fatunde tendered through the first prosecution witness, Mr. Nwamba Chukwuebuka, a cash sum of N4,365,840, said to have been recovered from the Abakaliki home of Justice Ngwuta.

Chukwuebuka, a building contractor said to have been engaged by Justice Ngwuta to build some houses in Abakaliki, had earlier testified on January 18, 2017 that there was originally N27m contained in three bags, but that a substantial part of the money had been expended on the building projects before the bags were discovered by the operatives of the DSS.

He said the remaining amount of money which was counted by DSS operatives in his presence at the Abakaliki home of Justice Ngwuta was N4,365,840.

The sum of N4,365,840 cash wrapped in a cellophane and loaded in a brown bag.

The bag and another silver-color bag containing documents were also admitted as exhibits.

The judge ordered that the bags with the money should remain in the custody of the DSS for safekeeping.

The prosecuting counsel also tendered the statements made to the DSS by the witness.

The statements dated, November 12 and November 13 and 17, 2016, were admitted as exhibits without objection.

The witness, under cross-examination, confirmed that the bags and their contents belonged to the defendant and nobody else had since laid claim to them.