A five-hour stand-off at the Abuja house of Supreme Court Justice Mary Odili ended Friday after a Magistrate Court in a late-night order revoked a search warrant that it granted to the Joint Panel Recovery unit of the Federal Ministry of Justice to search her house.
The Magistrate Court later said it was deceived into granting the search warrant.
Made up of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Nigeria Police Force, and the Ministry of Justice, the panel was armed with search warrants from the magistrates’ court to enter the house.
This followed a claim by a certain whistleblower by the name Aliyu Umar, that some illegal activities were being carried out at the house located at No. 9, Imo Street, Maitama, Abuja.
“I have observed some illegal activities going on in those houses within Abuja are illegal and hereby report the said matter to the law enforcement agency.
“I hereby state that all information provided by me to the EFCC is true and correct to the best of my knowledge,” Umar said in the affidavit, which was dated October 13, 2021.
Umar’s claims were supported by a second affidavit, by Lawrence Ajodo, a Chief Superintendent of Police. Armed with the two documents, the Panel sought from the chief magistrate in Abuja a search warrant to search the house.
The application was granted on October 29, 2021, by Chief Magistrate Emmanuel Iyanna, who approved the search warrant.
Once the search warrant was given, police officers and other members of the panel raced to the house in question, which was later discovered to be the home of Justice Mary Odili, the wife of Peter Odili, a two-term former of Rivers State.
However, Justice Odili was reported to have resisted the attempt to search her home, insisting that the house was hers and not Peter Odili’s own.
Later the EFCC in a statement by its spokesman, Mr. Wilson Uwujaren, dissociated the commission from the siege and asked members of the public to disregard the reports going on Friday night.
According to him “The attention the EFCC has been drawn to claims in a section of the media that operatives of the commission today, October 29, 2021, stormed the Maitama, Abuja home of a Judge of the Supreme Court, Justice Mary Odili, purportedly to execute a search.
“The commission, by this statement, wishes to inform the public that the report is false as it did not carry out any operation at the home of Justice Odili. If there was any such operation as claimed by the media, it was not carried out by the EFCC. The commission enjoins the public to discountenance the report.”
As the confusion raged, the chief magistrate issued an order on Friday night accusing the government of deceiving the court.
According to the court, “Upon misrepresentation to this honourable court that led to the issuance of a search warrant in favour of Joint Panel Recovery, Ministry of Justice, against House 9, Imo Street, Maitama, Abuja, dated October 29, 2021. In view of the above fact, the said search warrant is hereby revoked.”
Peter Odili, who was governor from 1999 to 2007, has been having a running battle with the EFCC. In 2007, upon leaving office, he obtained a perpetual injunction from the Federal High Court that barred the EFCC from investigating or prosecuting him.
In his latest encounter with the government agencies, the Nigerian Immigration Service seized his international passport last month and he subsequently sued the department.
The NIS later disclosed that its action was based on an instruction from the EFCC, which asked it to seize Odili’s passport as part of a probe.
