The Supreme Court gives the green light to the extradition of former Mint chief Okoyomon to the UK

● He says his appeal is unfounded

The Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal filed by the former Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company (NSPM), Emmanuel Okoyomon against the June 6, 2016 ruling of the Court of Appeal, Abuja Division.

The Court of Appeal in its ruling had upheld the ruling of 4 May 2015 of the Federal High Court in Abuja which granted the request of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) for permission to extradite Okoyomon to the United Kingdom (UK).

On Friday, a five-member bench of the Supreme Court, led by Justice Mohammed Garba, found in a unanimous ruling that the appeal, marked SC/456/2016, was unfounded.

Announcement

In the main judgment, prepared by Justice Emmanuel Agim, but read by Justice Mohammed Idris on Friday, the Supreme Court found that Okoyomon had not presented any case that would compel him to interfere with the concurrent findings of the two lower courts.

The court of first instance rejected the appeal, confirmed the sentence of the Court of Appeal, but abstained from awarding the costs to the appellant.

According to the AGF, Okoyomon will be extradited to stand trial in the United Kingdom, where he has been charged with complicity in corruption charges involving officials of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), NSPM and Securency International Pty of Australia.

In its June 6, 2016 ruling, the Court of Appeal resolved three of the four issues decided against Okoyomon.

In the main judgment, Justice Moore Adumein held that, contrary to Okoyonmon’s argument, Nigeria has an obligation under the London Scheme for Extradition, within the Commonwealth, to extradite a person wanted in relation to an extradition offense in another Commonwealth country.

Justice Adumein said: “This provision is substantially supported by the provisions of sections 1 and 2 of the Extradition Act 2004. The lower court was right to have acted in this way to avoid a situation where Nigeria could breach its obligations to the Commonwealth border country, the United Kingdom.

“The provisions of the London Extradition Plan within the Commonwealth have been substantially made into law in Nigeria.

“The learned trial judge, in my humble opinion, rightly held that the respondent (AGF) presented a case to justify why the extradition request should be granted, while the appellant failed, by his defence, to convince the court why the request should be refused.

“The resolution of issue number three in favor of the appellant would not affect the final outcome of this appeal.

“This is because the appellant has not demonstrated how the failure to hear the point raised suo motu (alone) by the first-tier judge, whether he was a British citizen or not, caused a miscarriage of justice.

“The law provides that to justify an appellate court’s reversal of a lower court’s decision, the appellant must demonstrate that the failure to hear the point raised and resolved suo motu caused a miscarriage of justice.

“In the present case, whether the appellant is a British citizen or not did not affect the merits of the present extradition request, which the Court of First Instance rightly found to be well founded on the basis of the facts provided by the appellant (appeal respondent).

“Since the threshold issues in this appeal have been resolved against the appellant, this appeal should be dismissed. Accordingly, this appeal is dismissed,” Adumein said.

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