N738.6 Fraud: Judge Blasts Maina, Defence Counsel for Stalling Case

Justice Abubakar Kutigi of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, FCT, Asokoro, Abuja on Friday, February 20, 2026 scolded former Chairman of the defunct Pension Reform Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina and the defence counsel for their antics aimed at stalling his trial before the court and demanded that the defendant should show up in court and defend himself against the charges of corruption and fraud levelled against him.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, is prosecuting Maina, alongside Ann Igwe Olachi on a nine-count charge, bordering on receipt of stolen funds to the tune of N738, 612,019.99 (Seven Hundred and Thirty-eight Million, Six Hundred and Twelve Thousand, Nineteen Naira, Ninety-nine Kobo). They were arraigned in 2019.

The Friday’s proceedings, billed to be a trial-within-trial was again aborted following a request by Maina’s new counsel, Emmanuel Wuyi, for yet another adjournment of sitting, which he said would enable him to study the facts of the case as he was appearing in the matter for the first time.

“My lord, the first defendant has been ill and I understand that this case has a history of adjournments. This is my first time appearing before your lordship, being that I have just been briefed about this case. I am asking your lordship for two weeks to enable me to study the facts of the case and I am even looking at resolving this matter with the prosecution,” he said.

In his response, Kutigi said “Two weeks for what? Everybody is ready, everybody is tired. We want every party to have fair hearing and do their cases, but when there is an adjournment, he will go and hire a new lawyer and when we insist, we will go on, you will now say you were denied fair hearing. He has changed to another lawyer now and I have lost count of the numbers of lawyers who have appeared in this case. We know the substance and the end will determine it. The integrity of what we do here is critical and important,” he said.

Prosecution counsel, Francis Usani while addressing the court, regretted the stagnation of the case by the defendant and the defence team, pointing out that the witnesses of the prosecution for the trial-within-trial were present in court.

“My lord, only yesterday we were served with an application for a stay of proceedings, application on the jurisdiction of this court, travel application and application for appeal. If he (defence counsel) has been able to file such voluminous and bulky applications, it is assumed that the counsel knows the case so that we can start, except he is going to withdraw these applications and take a decision if he wants to continue with the trial-within-trial. I can give him the opportunity to watch the video, (statement recording video of the defendant), invite him to my office and let him watch the video, if he sees anything then he let us know so that we can save the court’s time,” he said.

Addressing the defence counsel again, Justice Kutigi said, “How can you say you want to do this case and at the same time you filed applications of jurisdiction, stay of proceedings and so on. What do you really want? You have to decide on what we are coming here to do on the next adjourned date.”

Maina’s counsel in his response made an oral application to withdraw the stay of proceedings while confirming his readiness to carry on with the trial-within-trial on the next adjourned date.

Justice Kutigi granted his oral application to withdraw the stay of proceedings, dated February 10, 2026 and adjourned the matter till February 26, 2026 for trial-within-trial.