By David Torough with Agency report

Former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Justice Walter Onnoghen will today hear his suit before the Court of Appeal challenging the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) order that removed him from office in 2019.A notice for hearing of the appeal is entitled, “CA/ABJ/375 & 376 & 377/2019 BTW: Justice Onnoghen and FRN”.

Onnoghen prays the court to void and set aside the CCT judgment delivered against him on April 18, 2019 on various grounds. In his appeal marked CA/ABJ/375 & 376 & 377/2019, Justice Onnoghen through his lead counsel, Adegboyega Awomolo, SAN asks the court to quash his conviction primarily on ground of want of jurisdiction, bias and absence of fair hearing.Onnoghen is the appellant, the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the sole respondent.The Code of Conduct Tribunal had in 2019 convicted Onnoghen in all the six-count charges of breach of Code of Conduct for Public Officers brought against him by the Federal Government while in office as CJN.In the lead judgment delivered by Chairman of the CCT Danladi Umar, he had ordered the immediate removal of Onnoghen from office as the CJN.The tribunal had also stripped him of all offices earlier occupied among which were the Chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC) and the chairmanship of the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC).The tribunal ordered the forfeiture of his five bank accounts and the money in the accounts which Onnoghen did not declare in his asset declaration form submitted to the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), an agency of the Federal Government.Although Onnoghen had been on suspension since Jan. 25, 2019 and had resigned on April 4, the tribunal nonetheless ordered his removal from office as the CJN and also as the chairman of both the NJC and FJSC.However, dissatisfied with the CCT decision, Onnoghen in 2019 approached the Court of Appeal with 16 grounds on why his conviction by the tribunal should be quashed.Among others, he maintained that the Danladi Umar-led CCT panel erred in law and occasioned a miscarriage of justice against him, when it failed to decline jurisdiction to entertain the six-count against him.He contended that the CCT Chairman ought to have recused himself from presiding over his trial.In his seven-point reliefs, Onnoghen, applied for an order setting aside his conviction as well as quashing the order for forfeiture of his assets and to discharge and acquit him of all the charges levelled against him.Listing some of the particulars of error in the CCT’s verdict, Onnoghen argued that he was s judicial officer at the time the charges were filed against him on Jan. 11, 2019 and as such cannot be subjected to the jurisdiction of the lower tribunal.“0n the authority of Nganiiwa v. FRN (2018) 4 NWLR (Pt. 1609) 30: at 340. 341 only the National Judicial Council (NJC) has the power to discipline the Appellant for misconduct and not the lower tribunal.“The lower tribunal had in the case of FRN V. Sylvester Nwali Nguta in charge No: CCT/ABJ/01/2017 delivered on 9th January, 2018, affirmed the position of the Court in FRN Nganjiwa v. FRN.“The court dismissed the charges acquitted and discharged Justice Ngwuta being a Judicial Officer subject only to the discipline of the NJC.“The lower tribunal has no jurisdiction over serving judicial officers such as the appellant, save the National Judicial Council..“The Motion on Notice dated Jan. 14, 2019, challenging the jurisdiction ought to be granted in all material particular as it purports to save the lower tribunal of needless futile exercise.“The lower tribunal erred in law when it dismissed the Appellant’s Application seeking the chairman to recuse himself from further proceedings on the ground of real likelihood of bias and thus occasioned a miscarriage of justice.“The Appellant has alleged that the chairman of the lower tribunal is biased towards him as a result of open remarks in the tribunal as well as the manner in which the proceedings was being conducted,” Onnoghen argued.Contrary to the CCT finding, Onnoghen, said he did not admit the fact of non-declaration of Assets from 2005 as the Justice of the Supreme Court, adding that he only stated that he did not declare in 2009 as required because he forgot.He challenged the order for the confiscation of his assets on the grounds that the assets were legitimately acquired, as against the provisions of paragraph three of the section 23 of the CCB Act which only permits the seizure of such assets “if they were acquired by fraud.”He faulted the failure of the prosecution to present the petitioner, Denis Aghanya before the tribunal whose petition led to the charges against him.Justice Onnoghen maintained that all the allegations brought against him “constitute no offence and should therefore not have formed the basis for his conviction”.The former CJN asked the Court of Appeal to issue some orders against the CCT judgment among which are that the tribunal lacks the jurisdiction to entertain the case and that its Chairman ought to have recused itself from the proceedings.Onnoghen therefore applied for an order setting aside his conviction and another one setting aside the order for forfeiture of his assets made by the tribunal as well as to discharge and acquit him from the charges.Justice Onnoghen’s judicial career and tenure as the CJN ended abruptly on April 4, when he reportedly submitted his letter of resignation to then President Muhammadu Buhari.His tenure ended dramatically in the same manner his ascension to the office was enmeshed in controversy after having spent 30 years on the bench and 41 years in the legal profession.As the next in line, based on the succession tradition in the Supreme Court, Justice Onnoghen was due to step in as the substantive CJN when his predecessor Justice Mahmud Mohammed retired on attaining the mandatory retirement age of 70 years on Nov. 10, 2016.But his appointment in substantive capacity was delayed by President Buhari for reason(s) not officially disclosed to the public.He was appointed as the Acting CJN while the president was making up his mind on what to do about what was speculated to be “some reports” about him.He remained Acting CJN until Buhari went to London on a medical vacation, where he remained for three months, thus paving the way for the then Acting President, Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo to send Onnoghen’s name to the Senate for confirmation as the substantive CJN.Following his confirmation by the Senate on March 1, 2017, Osinbajo on March 7 swore him in as the substantive CJN.Onnoghen was to be in office till Dec 22, 2020 but his tenure was cut short on account a petition against him in Jan. by a non-governmental organisation, the Anti-Corruption and Research-Based Data Initiative.He was accused in the petition of violating the Code of Conduct for Public Officers in relation to assets declaration.Based on the petition, the CCB filed charges against him before the CCT by January 11.It was established that he failed to declare his assets between June 2005 and Dec. 14, 2016.It was also found that he made false declaration of his assets on Dec. 14, 2016 by omitting his domiciliary dollar, euro and pound sterling accounts as well as his two naira accounts, all maintained with Standard Chattered Bank (Nigeria) Ltd.