Nigerian chief justice sacked for false asset declaration

The Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) has convicted the Chief Justice of Nigeria Walter Onnoghen for false declaration of assets and proceeded to sack him from office.

In a judgment delivered on Thursday, the Tribunal found the Chief Justice guilty of hiding the extent of his wealth contrary to the code of conduct for public officers and removed him from office.
Onnoghen was suspended by President Muhammadu Buhari in January, weeks before the last presidential election, in a move that triggered accusations of interference in judicial matters.
The CCT said it had also banned Onnoghen from holding public office for 10 years and ordered any assets he could not account for to be forfeited to the state.
Meanwhile, Onnoghen has appealed the tribunal’s decision.
In a notice of appeal, filed at the Registry of the CCT, shortly after the judgment on Thursday, Onnoghen raised 16 grounds on which he faulted the decision and urged the Court of Appeal to set it aside and discharge and acquit him.
The appellant want the Court of Appeal to hold that the CCT lacked the jurisdiction to hear the charge and that the tribunal ought to have recuse itself from the trial.
He also prayed the tribunal to set aside all the orders made by the tribunal in the judgment, including that for assets forfeiture.
The appellant argued, among others, that the tribunal erred in law when it refused to abide by existing judicial precedents in refusing his applications, challenging its jurisdiction and asking it to recuse itself.
“The lower tribunal erred in law when it refused to recuse itself from the proceedings in view of the open declaration by the Chairman of the tribunal that he is only accountable to the President, who appointed him and nobody else, because he is not a judicial officer and thus, occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice.
“The lower tribunal erred in law when it held that the appellant confessed to the charges framed by admission and used that as a basis to hold that the appellant did not declare his assets from the year 2005 when he became a justice of the Supreme Court and thus occasioned a grave miscarriage of justice.
“The lower tribunal erred in law when it held that the appellant is guilty of counts 2 – 6 of the charge in view of the fact that the appellant made an admission that he did not declare the Standard Chartered Bank account numbers in 2014.