Maina slumps in court, judge suspends sitting

A former Chairman of the defunct Pension Reformed Taskforce Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, on Thursday, collapsed in court.

Maina collapsed in the dock when his counsel, Anayo Adibe, was addressing the court on his no-case submission before Justice Okon Abang handling his trial.

The court had to rise for five minutes to enable officials of the Correctional Service and relations of the former pension boss to attend to him.

EFCC is prosecuting Maina, alongside his firm, Common Input Property and Investment Ltd, on a 12-count of operating fictitious bank accounts, corruption, and money laundering to the tune of N2 billion, for which the commission has so far called six witnesses.

Maina was granted bail in the sum of N1 billion on November 26, 2019, which was later varied on January 28, 2020, to N500 million with a senator as surety, and further varied on June 29, 2020, leading to a volunteer by Ndume as his surety.

The Nigeria Police Force, extradited Maina, to Nigeria from Niamey, Niger Republic, where he was arrested after being declared wanted by the court over his trial.

The former pension boss was arrested on 30th November 2020 by the team from INTERPOL Nigeria, led by the Commissioner of Police INTERPOL, CP Garba Umar.

Maina was flown into Nigeria aboard an NPF Jet 5N-HAR and landed at exactly 1417Hrs (Nigerian Time). (The Guardian)