Cell phone call logs confirming conversations and text message exchanges between Senator Ali Ndume and former Boko Haram spokesman, Ali Konduga, were on Tuesday admitted in evidence and marked as ‘Exhibit 7’ by the Federal High Court Abuja, in the ongoing trial of the Senator.
Trial judge, Justice Gabriel Kolawole admitted the exhibit after he overruled the objection raised by Ndume’s Counsel, Rickey Tarfa (SAN). The call logs and text messages obtained from two telephones belonging to Senator Ndume and Konduga were processed by a forensic examiner from the Department of State Security Service (SSS), Mr. Aliu Usman.
Tarfa had battled spiritedly to convince the court not to admit the documentary evidence against his client. His primary ground of objection was that the SSS operative who prepared the documentary evidence as a forensic examiner from SSS did not disclose his qualifications as an expert.
He argued that failure of the expert to back up his claim with requisite qualification as demanded by law is fatal to admissibility of the documentary evidence. He also argued that the telephone conversations and the SMS messages documented in a bounded report were not certified as required by Section 102 of the Evidence Act.
He argued that before such a document from a public officer could be admitted in evidence by a law court, it must be certified by the appropriate authority. In addition, he objected to admission of the document on the ground that it was a computer generated document. He, therefore, asked Justice Kolawole to throw out the document for being inadmissible in law.
But Mr. Thompson Olatigbe, the Federal Government prosecutor, asked the judge to dismiss the objection on the ground that the document was prepared by the witness, and that he signed it as his own report of the forensic examination carried out on the telephone conversations between Senator Ndume and Konduga.
He told the court that the SSS operative had earlier introduced himself as a forensic examiner so he would not have been employed by SSS if he was not qualified
In his ruling, Justice Kolawole agreed that the failure of the SSS operative to establish his qualification was fatal to the probate value to be placed on the exhibit. He noted that the document does not fall among the public documents that must be certified before they can be admitted in law.
He also held that the witness never claimed that he generated the contents of the report from computer, as claimed by the defence lawyer, adding that the value to be attached to the report would be determined in the course of trial since the witness did not disclose his qualification.
Earlier, the witness had given the court details of how he was mandated by a probe panel to examine the conversations and text messages exchanged by Senator Ndume and Boko Haram spokesman in order to ascertain the allegation of the Boko Haram sect that the Senator was their financier
Further hearing continues today, Wednesday.
