A Federal High Court in Lagos yesterday ordered the release of a ship, M.V Marivia, which was seized on January 9 for allegedly importing toxic waste into the country.<\/p>\n
Justice Okechukwu Okeke ordered the release after fixing bail at $500,000.<\/p>\n
Justice Okeke held that the amount, estimated by the prosecution to be about N80million, must be guaranteed by Zenith Bank, United Bank of Africa or Guaranty Trust Bank.<\/p>\n
M.V Marivia, seized on Tin Can Port in Apapa, Lagos, was said to have originated from Tilbury, United Kingdom.<\/p>\n
Justice Okeke held that the bail was granted to protect international business interests that might involve the ship.<\/p>\n
The Federal Government last week filed a three-count charge against the ship and three others \u2013 Rumok David; Mgbachi Fidelis Chibuzo and Bonicks Investment.<\/p>\n
Their planned arraignment was stalled by the prosecution\u2019s inability to produce the accused in court.<\/p>\n
But yesterday, lead prosecution lawyer Akin Akintewe told the court about his intention to substitute the earlier charge with a new one.<\/p>\n
The new charge has Rumok David and Bonicks Investment as defendants. Mgbachi Chibuzor is excluded.<\/p>\n
Akintewe said the prosecution had found him not to be culpable for the alleged offence.<\/p>\n
Besides Mrs. Benedicta Aitalegbe, Legal Adviser to the firm, CMA CGM Groups, which owns the vessel, the two accused were not in court.<\/p>\n
It was alleged that the harmful wastes, comprising a mixture of functioning and non-functioning electrical\/electronic equipment, imported into the country by David, were loaded in two 40ft containers.<\/p>\n
The prosecution alleged that the containers carried equipment, whose cords were already cut, others with broken parts and none of them was packaged.<\/p>\n
Akintewe also alleged that no Certificate of Testing was issued on the items in the container.<\/p>\n
The National Toxic Waste Dump Watch was also said to have confirmed that the items contained in the vessel did not meet the criteria for importation.<\/p>\n
The accused were not in court for their scheduled arraignment.<\/p>\n
The case was adjourned till February 13.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Federal High Court in Lagos yesterday ordered the release of a ship, M.V Marivia, which was seized on January 9 for allegedly importing toxic waste into the country. Justice Okechukwu Okeke ordered the release after fixing bail at $500,000…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}