Lawal Rabana, SAN, has strongly debunked allegations made against his client, Mr. Jide Omokore, owner of Atlantic Energy, who is currently enmeshed in legal fireworks with the federal government that his client bribed the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari to facilitate a meeting with the president for a soft landing. He described both allegations of bribing the Chief of Staff and the judge handling the case as outrageous lies to smear not only his client but top officials of government and the judiciary. He cautioned the media against the rush to publish damaging falsehoods as facts. Rabana spoke to Olaoluwakitan Babatunde on telephone
Can you react to allegations in some online media that Abba Kyari took Jide Omokore twice to see the President after he had bribed Kyari so that his issue with the NNPC can be resolved?
I thank you for this call you have put through to me that we can make some clarifications and the need for clarifications are two folds.
One, is to debunk and to say out rightly that it is total falsehood that Mr. Omokore has meet the Chief of Staff twice with an intention to get some supports or soft landing from Mr. President. Right from day one of this crisis between Atlantic Oil and Mr. Jide Omokore, we have been consistently maintaining our position that this is a breach of contract, in respect of which parties are disputing how much ought to have been paid into the government account and how much Omokore has paid so far. And there have been series of meetings, correspondences in order to resolve the matter which is still ongoing. But we would not want a situation whereby a sitting public officer will be maligned or dragged into this issue negatively to suggest that there is an attempt to compromise. It is not true. That report by the online media is completely false; that I can say authoritatively.
Does Jide Omokore have any relationship with Abba Kyari that you know of that may have suggested what has been alleged ?
I have asked him and he said he has never even met Kyari. He only knows him like every other Nigerian would know a high public officer. I also have never met Aba Kyari before but I will know him when I see him. I will say this is our Chief of Staff because he’s always in the newspapers, on televisions and so to that extent, we all know such people. But there is no direct contact or personal relationship with him to the best of my knowledge, which Omokore told me and I believe him.
The report alleged that Jide Omokore was given bail and that he didn’t leave the court premises. It further alleged a bribe of $2 million to the Judge. What’s your reaction to this?
Thank you for wanting to clarify this. There is no iota of truth in that allegation. And let me tell you, people don’t understand how the bail system works. If you are an accused person other than a capital offence of murder, armed robbery, treason, you are entitled to bail. And there is no ceremony about it. Once you fulfill the bail conditions, the Registrar of the court attest to it that you have met the conditions by verifying the sureties; you walk away. There’s nothing left again. So, there is nothing unusual about a person being taken to court, his application for bail was moved, the court granted it, set out the terms and the terms were met and the man went back home. There is nothing left. There are several of such cases where people would fulfill their bail conditions, it is when you don’t fulfill your bail conditions before the close of work that the judge could say take him back to prison or EFCC custody pending the perfection of his bail conditions. But once you perfect it, you walk free. So there’s nothing unusual about being arraigned in court, fulfilling your bail conditions and walking away. And actually, the principle of presumption of innocence entails you don’t humiliate a man, you don’t scandalise a man, you don’t punish him before the trial commences let alone judgment given.
On the allegation of $2 million bribe, it is very, very unfortunate. And let me used this opportunity to caution the press and particularly the online media practitioners that you just don’t malign people, by writing outrageous or outlandish things about sitting judicial officers or public officers just because they cannot reply. It does no good to the image of this country. When a judge is maligned like that, how do you expect the public to have confidence in the judicial system? How do you expect people to have respect for the system. Unfortunately, it is being read all over the world that Nigerian judges are corrupt, Nigerian lawyers are corrupt. It is very saddening. For me, I think there must be an end to this behaviour of undermining individuals and state institutions. .
I can also tell you categorically, Omokore did not give $2 million or anything to the judge trying the case or any other judge handling the matters related to his company. People have forgotten and they can verify, this man’s assets, his bank accounts have been frozen for over a year now. Things are tough for him personally. Where would he or any Nigerian get $2 million to give to a judge? Do you know how much that is? What is the nature of the whole charge which at the end of the day the sentence and an option of fine would not even be up to that amount. This, as we have repeatedly stated, is a commercial breach of contract. It is an outrageous allegation and it is very unfortunate. I just want to appeal to the media, not because I am his lawyer but as a Nigerian to be careful of running down all our institutions because the effects are enormous. If there is no Judiciary there will be anarchy. And now the trend is that any judge handling any high-profile case, be political or corruption related case, is tagged to have taken money. Are we going to bring Indians, or Ghanaians to become judges in Nigeria? They are our Judges and when we begin to malign them, destroy their reputation and careers, how will that help the country? It is not good for us.
So, it is absolutely not true that Omokore gave $2 million to the trial judge, he doesn’t even have such money right now. It is a bogus and outrageous claim. We were never approached by anybody to offer anything to anybody for anything because we believe in the merit of our case and I don’t want to go further into any issue other than to say the matter is before the court but we should please not scandalise our judicial system. We should also not scandalise public officers who are making enormous sacrifices to see how we can reinvent this country and move forward. We all love the fight against corruption because it has virtually brought Nigeria to its knees but in the course of fighting it, we should not destroy our institutions, we should not destroy individuals and all that.
These online people have a responsibility to verify stories before publishing them because it does a lot of injury not only to the individual judges but also to the collective image of the judiciary and the country at large. When people begin to read that our judges are corrupt, our Judiciary is corrupt there will be no confidence in the system. Please, there is no truth in those allegations.
What is Jide Omokore going to do about the medium that put out such allegation?
My own attitude is that firstly, the matter is in court both the criminal and civil aspects of it and therefore there’s no point to start joining issues with the press and all that. And I’ve always caution my client as a counsel that he should talk less and let the documents speak for him. I’ve always said the appropriate place to speak for him is the courtroom; anytime you are called upon to defend yourself, you present all the facts and figures and then it will become public for Nigerians to know. But, for now, we don’t intend to take any action. For now our appeal is that the press should please verify stories before publication.
Again, I don’t know where they got the phrase shady businessman from. When you call someone a shady businessman it means everything he is doing is either illegal or surrounded with some secrecy. It is an open knowledge that there was a valid Strategic Alliance Agreement duly sign by principal officers of NPDC, endorsed by NNPC, principal officers of Atlantic Oil and it has been in operation.
So there’s nothing shady about it, the documents are there. And if you care to go to any of the courts where those matters are pending you can see the documents, you can see movement of products, you can see payments of money, they are all documented. So, when you have a transaction that is documented, what is shady about it? It is only when it’s undocumented and when they say where is your agreement or documents and you don’t have, then it turns out that the transaction was by telephone conversation, you paid money into an account and they say show us the details and you say, no we paid him cash, that is when you get suspicious. But this is not the case. Everything is properly documented. So they should not hang a man just because there is a controversy over a commercial transaction as to whether money went there or not. Jide Omokore is not a shady businessman and contrary to the reports, he is a reputable business man.
