Abuja court grants EFCC leave to commit Faisal Maina to prison

A Federal High Court in Abuja has granted the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) permission to hand Faisal Maina over to prison authorities so that he can serve the jail term imposed on him.

Faisal is the son of Abdulrasheed Maina, a former chairman of the defunct Pension Reform Task Team (PRTT).

Justice James Omotosho gave the permission while ruling on an ex parte application the EFCC filed and which the agency’s lawyer, M. K. Hussain, moved.

The judge granted leave for the commission to seek an order enforcing a judgment still pending against Faisal, who stopped appearing in court from June 24, 2020, after he was granted bail while the EFCC was prosecuting him on a three-count charge.

Justice Omotosho also issued a warrant for Faisal to be handed to prison authorities to serve the term the Court of Appeal imposed on him, beginning from October 14, the date he was arrested.

According to the judge, in line with the Court of Appeal’s judgment of November 24, 2022, the defendant was sentenced to three years on counts one and three, and to seven years on count two, with all the terms to run concurrently. The jail term, he said, starts from October 14, when operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) re-arrested him and later handed him to the EFCC.

Faisal was convicted and sentenced in absentia in a judgment delivered on October 7, 2021 by Justice Okon Abang, then of the Federal High Court in Abuja and now of the Court of Appeal.

Justice Abang sentenced him to five years each on counts one and three and to 14 years on count two, ordering that the terms run concurrently from the day of the judgment. Faisal had been accused, among other things, of laundering about N58.1 million.

The judge further directed that Faisal, whom the prosecution claimed jumped bail and escaped to the United States, be arrested wherever he is found in Nigeria and remanded in any correctional centre.

Faisal challenged that judgment on appeal, and in its decision of November 24, 2022, the Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction but cut the terms of imprisonment to three years on counts one and three and seven years on count two, which it said should run concurrently.