ABUJA: Nigeria’s top judge handling corruption cases against public officials has himself been charged with bribery, court papers showed Saturday.
Danladi Umar was accused by the country’s anti-graft body EFCC of demanding 10 million naira (22,300 euros; $27,800) from a suspect “for a favor to be afterwards shown to him in relation to the pending charge,” according to court papers seen by AFP.
The embattled judge was also alleged to have received in 2012, through his personal assistant, the sum of 1.8 million naira from the same accused “in connection with the pending case before him,” the papers revealed.
Umar, who chairs the Code of Conduct tribunal, last year cleared Senate president Bukola Saraki of corruption charges linked to his time as a state governor.
The bribery allegations against Umar were first brought to the fore when Saraki was charged with corruption linked to false asset declaration and money laundering as governor of his central Kwara state between 2003 and 2011.
Doubts about Umar’s integrity grew further when the senate president was cleared in June 2017 of the charges against him.
The EFCC appealed the ruling and in December, a panel of judges ordered a retrial of three of the 18 charges initially brought against Saraki, Nigeria’s third-ranking politician after the president and vice president.
The case has been one of the most high-profile prosecutions since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015, vowing to end graft and impunity at the highest level.
Head of Nigeria’s anti-corruption court charged with bribery
Head of Nigeria’s anti-corruption court charged with bribery
Protesters try to attack driver after truck speeds through anti-Iran demonstration in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles police responded Sunday after somebody drove a U-Haul box truck down a street crowded with marchers demonstrating in support of the Iranian people, causing protesters to scramble out of the way and then run after the speeding vehicle to try to attack the driver.
The U-Haul truck, with its side mirrors shattered, was stopped several blocks away and surrounded by police cars. ABC7 news helicopter footage showed officers keeping the crowd at bay as demonstrators swarmed the truck, throwing punches at the driver and thrusting flagpoles through the driver’s side window.
The police department confirmed its officers were on the scene but didn’t immediately say if anyone was arrested.
Two people were evaluated by paramedics and both declined treatment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
Several hundred people had gathered Sunday afternoon in the Westwood neighborhood to protest against the Iranian theocracy. The LA police department eventually issued a dispersal order, and by 5 p.m. only about a hundred protesters were still at the scene, ABC7 reported.
Activists say a crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed more than 530 people. Protesters flooded the streets in Iran’s capital of Tehran and its second-largest city again Sunday.
