The suspended Dean of the Faculty of Law, Professor Cyril Ndifon, has filed his no-case submission before the Federal High Court, Abuja, against the amended sexual harassment and gratification suit instituted against him and his lawyer, Sunny Anyanwu, by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC.
In the process filed, the professor maintained that the 22-year-old star witness, was in a “love” relationship with him.
Going by the series of chats between TJK and the Professor and as revealed in court, the star and second witness had also admitted , under cross-examination by the defence team led by Joe Agi, SAN, that several allegations she made in open court — including being forced to perform oral sex on the professor — were not mentioned in her original statement to the ICPC, saying her experience was summarised out of “shame” and “fear.”
But in Ndifon’s no-case submission filed by Agi, the professor claimed that evidence before the court shows that text messages between his client and TKJ were that of emotional feelings and neither him nor herwere was in fear.
Agi in the process, contending that the “unwholesome and illegal intrusion” into the phone of his client by the complainant has now put before the whole world what TKJ and the 1st defendant intended to be a personal and private communication, thus injuring and negatively impacting their characters and persons.
Agi in the process is also contending that there is inconvertible evidence that his client was arrested and investigated on an alleged offence committed in the year 2015 when he later proved to the commission that he had been cleared of the alleged offence by the police.
Agi avarred that the Commission who at this time was desperate to create, search for any conceivable crime seized the telephone of the 1st Defendant who was under their custody and without obtaining an order of the court as required by Section 45 of the Cyber Crime Act in breach of his fundamental right as guaranteed by Section 37 of the 1999 Constitution as amended broke into his phone and started going through his phone in search for an offense and without respect to his right to privacy.
Agi urged the court to decline jurisdiction on the case because, under cross-examination, Chima (PW1) asserted that they received several oral and written complaints but never mentioned TKJ as one of such complainants and that TKJ was not even listed as a witness in the originating charge but “surfaced after the amended charge was filed, and also wondering why the Registrar of UNICAL, who was listed as a witness in the original charge, was not listed in the amended one.
The senior lawyer urged the court to keep the ICPC within the scope and their legally demarcated boundaries as clearly provided in the statute that created them, and also prayed that count 4, which states that threatening the witness not to honor ICPC invitation, added in the originating charge was not commenced by due process of law thereby robbing the trial Court of jurisdiction.
Agi further contended that in the instant case, counts 1 and 2 which deal with sending and receiving nude videos and count 3 of the original charge, are not within the jurisdiction of the court as Section 26(2) and 61(3) of the Corrupt Practice and Other Related Offences Act, 2020 prevent the court from entertaining any of the offences brought.
The ICPC closed its case on February 14 after fielding an exhibit keeper as well as a forensic analyst, Fungo Bwaigu, who told Justice James Omotosho that the dean’s phone contained WhatsApp chats, nude videos, phone calls, and text messages involving TKJ, adding he was “not given TKJ’s phone by ICPC to analyze.”
The court however adjourned the trial to February 27 for adoption of written addresses by parties on the no-case submission.
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