Courts nullify arrest warrant against Kashamu, blast NDLEA

Two judges of a Federal High Court in Lagos on Monday quashed the provisional warrant of arrest obtained against Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Senator-elect for Ogun East Senatorial District, Prince Buruji Kashamu.

Justice Okon Abang, while ruling on a fundamental rights enforcement suit brought by Kashamu to enforce the court’s earlier judgement barring the NDLEA from extraditing him to the United States of America for drug related offences, held that NDLEA fraudulently secured the warrant of arrest by concealing fact.

Justice Abang had in a judgement delivered last week Thursday declared that until another judgement of his court which was delivered on January 6, 2014 is appealed against and set aside by the Court of Appeal, no extradition proceedings can commence against Kashamu.

He held that the provisional warrant of arrest was obtained for want of jurisdiction in the sense that the judge’s attention was not drawn to the existing order barring NDLEA and the AGF from taking any further steps on the extradition process.

Justice Abang, therefore, declared that the proceedings at the Abuja High Court was a nullity.

Meanwhile, another judge, Justice Ibrahim Buba in another proceedings restrained the NDLEA from arresting and arraigning Kashamu in furtherance of the extradition charges.

Kashamu had filed the second suit before Justice Buba seeking an order to nullify the same provisional warrant of arrest obtained by the NDLEA against him.

In the case before Justice Abang, the court also overruled the preliminary objections raised by the NDLEA and the AGF.

The objections raised were to the extent that the application is an abuse of court’s process, the court has no function to perform again since judgement has been delivered and that there was no personal service of the application on the NDLEA chairman, Ahmadu Giade.

In a motion on notice filed before Justice Buba, Kashamu had asked the court to nullify the NDLEA’s application to commence extradition proceedings against him in a suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS /479/2015.