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Nigerian bribery trial put off
23/01/2004 14:26 - (SA)
Abuja - A Nigerian judge on Friday delayed the start of the landmark trial of five senior officials accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in alleged bribes from a French electronics giant.
All five suspects and a sixth man alleged to have acted as an agent for France's Sagem company arrived at the Abuja High Court to face charges of corruption linked to a $214m national ID card project.
But the court registrar told reporters and lawyers that one of the judges, Madashiru Oniyangi, had postponed the case until February 25.
Ballot-rigging
Onyiyangi was instead sitting on an electoral tribunal probing allegations of ballot-rigging in last year's gubernatorial election in nearby Kogi State, the registrar told the court.
In 2001, Paris-based Sagem won a deal to oversee Nigeria's project to supply all of its adult citizens, an estimated 60 million people, with modern national identity cards carrying their fingerprints.
Since then two former interior ministers who oversaw the contract, Sunday Afolabi and Mohammed Shatta, have been arrested along with two officials, one of whom, Hussaini Akwanga, had since been named labour minister.
A senior ruling party official, Okwesilieze Nwodo, and an alleged agent of Sagem, Niyi Adelagun, have been charged with distributing the bribes.
All six have pleaded not guilty to a total of 16 corruption-related charges and released on bail after surrendering their passports. The officials are accused of accepting bribes of between $30 000 and $500 000 each.
Seeking extradition
A seventh suspect, Christopher Agidi, the former director of the Department for National Civic Registration, has been detained in London by British police. Nigeria is seeking his extradition.
Sagem has refused to comment on the allegations.
Nigeria has an unenviable reputation as one of the world's most deeply corrupt countries, but in the five years since its return to civilian rule in 1999 not a single senior official has been convicted of graft.
Since winning a second term last April, President Olusegun Obasanjo has vowed to attack the problem with renewed vigour and the delayed trial has come to be seen as a test of the seriousness of his anti-corruption drive.
- AFP
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