NJC PROBE: Panel receives jurists’, ACN leaders’ phone conversations

CONTENTS of several telephone conversations among justices of the Court of Appeal, including its president, Justice Ayo Isa Salami

and certain members of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) are now in possession of the National Judicial Council (NJC) probe panel investigating alleged corruption in the judiciary, the Nigerian Tribune can exclusively reveal.

The panel, according to information available to the Nigerian Tribune, got the exhibit last week from security agencies, which demanded same from the four main mobile telecommunications firms operating in the country, as they also deepened activities in their separate probe of the top jurists over the controversial call logs.

The five-man probe panel, headed by Justice Umaru Abdullahi, had reportedly requested the security agencies to help in sourcing the call logs of the justices, who are being investigated over allegations by former governors of Ekiti and Osun states, Chief Segun Oni and Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, that the justices who sat on the appeal panels that sacked them from office compromised judicial ethics, following gratification by the ACN chieftains.

The logs are of telephone lines belonging to some personalities mentioned in the several petitions to the NJC, including three of the justices who sat in the panels that decided the Osun and Ekiti governorship appeal cases.

Contents of the call logs were not made known at press time.

Though the panel wrote directly requesting for the call logs from the telecoms firms, the refusal of one of them to avail it of the justices’ and politicians’ call logs on legal grounds was said to have prompted the panel to route its request through the clearing house of the security agencies, though the panel also ended up getting direct answer from the other three.

It was gathered that the panel had at the last botched sitting asked the petitioners, Oni, Oyinlola and the PDP Osun State chapter if they needed any additional document, with the petitioners reportedly submitting more mobile phone numbers which they wanted the call logs and their contents recovered from the telecommunications firms.

The request was said to have been forwarded to the security agencies, which are also probing the alleged corruption cases against the justices, with Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat meeting the panel and security agencies’ request.

Airtel’s and Etisalat’s call logs were reportedly made available to the NJC panel through the security agencies while Globacom’s was sent directly to both the NJC and the security agencies.

Globacom’s memo to the probe panel was dated May 3, 2011.

The trio had provided the call logs from September 2010 to January 2011 as demanded by the panel and security agencies.

The call logs the panel got from a particular security agency were dated May 6, 2011 while another call logs coming from another security agency were dated May 11, 2011.

MTN, however, had in a letter to the probe panel dated April 21, 2011 said it would be impossible to meet the panel’s demand, because of certain technical limitations, though it emerged that the telecoms firm was able to give a part of the call logs to the security agencies on demand, which had been reportedly made available to the Abdullahi panel.

MTN noted in the letter that “certain technical limitations” made it impossible for it to retrieve Call Detail Records (CDR) of calls made by subscribers before February this year.

The MTN letter was issued by Messrs Rotimi Akapo and Izegbua Okonya, who signed as Commercial Legal Managers.

It was in response to an earlier letter from the panel dated April 14, 2011, asking the telecoms company to forward the call logs of certain persons being probed.

The letter read in part: “Due to certain technical limitations on our systems, we are also unable to store or produce CDRs for more than three months preceding the date of the request. Therefore, we can only provide CDRs from February 2011-April 2011 based on your request. “

A security source said foul play was being suspected on the part of the MTN, because call records for post-paid lines mandatorily have a life span of 24 months in the telecoms system, while prepaid lines remain in the system for six months.

Only December 2010 call logs of the listed persons were reportedly provided by the telecoms firm to the security agencies.