The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has discharged and acquitted a former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen, of the charge that led to his removal from office in 2019.
The Appeal Court declared this in a judgement on Monday, November 4, 2024.
The appellate court also ordered the federal government to unfreeze Onnoghen’s account with Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria Limited.
Former President Muhammadu Buhari had, on January 25, 2019, suspended Justice Onnoghen from office as the CJN and swore in the next most senior jurist of the Supreme Court, Justice Tanko Muhammad as his replacement.
Onnoghen later filed a suit to challenge the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) order that removed him from office in 2019.
The suit was filed at the Court of Appeal in 2019.
Onnoghen prayed the court to void and set aside the CCT judgement delivered against him on various grounds on April 18, 2019.
In his appeal marked CA/ABJ/375 & 376 & 377/2019, Justice Onnoghen through his lead counsel, Adegboyega Awomolo (SAN), asked the appellate court to quash his conviction primarily on grounds of want of jurisdiction, bias and absence of fair hearing.
The CCT had in 2019 convicted Onnoghen in all the six-count charges of breach of the Code of Conduct for Public Officers brought against him by the federal government while in office as CJN.
The CCT Chairman, Danladi Umar, in his judgement, ordered the immediate removal of Onnoghen from office as the CJN.
The tribunal also stripped him of all offices earlier occupied among which were the Chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC) and also the chairman of the Federal Judicial Service Commission.
The tribunal also ordered the forfeiture of his five bank accounts and the money in the accounts which Justice 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 January 25, 2019, and resigned on April 4, the tribunal nonetheless ordered his removal from office as the CJN and also as the chairman of both the National Judicial Council and the Federal Judicial Service Commission.
However, dissatisfied with the CCT decision, Justice Onnoghen in 2019 approached the Court of Appeal with 16 grounds on why his conviction by the tribunal should be quashed.
