Former Chairman of the Pension Reformed Task Team (PRTT), Abdulrasheed Maina, has been released from Kuje Correctional Centre in Abuja, nine months after his arrest.
NAN revealed that Maina’s lawyer Adeola Adedipe, said his client was released on Monday evening after completing the necessary documents for his bail.
Adedipe said his client ought to have been released on July 24. However, the process was delayed due to administrative procedures.
“It was already late last week Friday so they now have a new timeline shifted at 6 O’clock. We went there and everything was done,” he said.
Adedipe said Maina’s release, would not only afford him the opportunity to get adequate medical attention but also enable him prepare for trial.
“We can only thank God and this is good for us because we will now have time to prepare for his defence; we will now have good conferencing on the matter,” he said.
“We will have a better perspective of what the case is all about. And this will also allow him to treat himself you know he has been very ill in order to stand the trial.”
Recall that The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had arraigned Maina before Okon Abang, a judge of the Federal High Court, Abuja, on October 25, 2019.
He was arraigned alongside Faisal, his son, and firm, Common Input Property and Investment Ltd. Maina was then charged with 12 counts bordering on money laundering but he pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Abang had reduced Maina’s bail condition from N1 billion to N500 million with a surety in the like sum who must be a serving senator as opposed to the earlier order of producing two serving senators.
The judge ruled that the surety, who should not have a criminal case pending in any court, must have a landed property fully developed in Maitama, Asokoro, Wuse II, Katampe or central business district of Abuja, with certificate of occupancy attached as evidence.
Maina had been unable to get a senator as surety until Ndume agreed to do so However, he eventually got surety, announcing through another of his lawyers– Joe Gadzama– that Ali Ndume, senator representing Borno south, had decided to stand as surety for him.
Ndume, who is the chairman, senate committee on army, had, in a statement on June 24, admitted standing as surety for Maina.
Ndume opined that the decision to back Maina did not come easy, as it took him six months of “painful consideration” to agree to be a surety for Maina, and that it was part of the cross he had to carry as Maina’s elected senator.
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