Supreme Court affirms Nyame’s 12- year jail term conviction

Former Governor of Taraba State, Reverend Jolly Nyame, on Friday failed in his bid to overturn his conviction and 12 years imprisonment over allegations of corruption at the Supreme Court.

The Governor had approached the Supreme Court asking for the upturning of November 2019 judgment of the Court of appeal which upheld his conviction and sentencing over corrupt allegations levelled against him while he was in office as governor by the lower court.

The court, in a unanimous judgment, held that Justice Adebukola Banjoko of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Gudu, Abuja was right to have convicted both Nyame in view of the overwhelming evidence presented by the prosecution led by Rotimi Jacobs (SAN).

The judgements were on the appeals filed by Nyame, against the judgment of the High Court of the FCT given on May 30, 2019.

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In the May 30 judgment, given on the charge marked: FCT/ABJ/CR/82/07, the trial court convicted Nyame on 27 out of the 41 counts contained in the charge filed against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in July 2007.

In a unanimous ruling on Friday, a five-man panel of the Supreme Court partially upheld the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

But the aspect of the judgment in which the former Governor was asked to pay fines running into millions of naira was set aside because, according to the Supreme Court judges, none of the parties to the case asked for it.

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