A former Director-General of the Bauchi Geographic Information Service, Baba Suleiman, and one Yusuf Abubakar, were on Tuesday arraigned before the Bauchi State High Court for land fraud.

The defendants were arraigned before Justice A. M. Sambo by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on seven counts bordering on conspiracy, forgery and obtaining by false pretences.

According to the EFCC, Suleiman and his accomplice abused their office and illegally took possession of the land allocated to one Kamal Sabo.

The EFCC, in a statement on Tuesday, claimed that Sabo sometime in 2018 applied and secured a plot of land from the Bauchi State Government, adding that Suleiman fraudulently processed the Right of Occupancy in his name, claiming that he had Sabo’s instruction to do so and collected the R of O without the applicant’s knowledge after it was approved on April 4, 2019, by the then state governor.

The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Following their plea, the prosecution counsel, A. M. Labaran, asked for a trial date and urged the court to remand the defendants in a correctional facility.

However, the defence counsel, M. A. Tsuwa, informed the court of the pending bail applications by his clients.

The court adjourned the matter till December 3, 2020, for the determination of the bail applications and ordered the remand of the defendants in the Bauchi Correctional Centre.

One of the charges read, “That you, Baba Abubakar Suleiman and Yusuf Abubakar, sometime in November 2019, in Bauchi, Bauchi State, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, did conspire among yourselves to commit an illegal act to wit; obtaining money under false pretences, and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 8(a) and punishable under Section 1(3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act, 2006.”

In this article: