It was something similar to a win-win situation for Sanator elect Buruji Kashamu yesterday as two different courts granted his prayers.
Justice Okon Abang of the Federal High court sitting in Lagos on Monday quashed the provisional warrant of arrest obtained by NDLEA against him.
Another judge, Justice Ibrahim Buba in another proceedings restrained the NDLEA from arresting and arraigning Kashamu in furtherance of the extradition proceedings.
Justice Okon Abang, while ruling on a fundamental rights enforcement suit brought by Kashamu to enforce the court’s earlier judgement barring the NDLEA from extraditing him to the United States of America for drug related offences, held that NDLEA fraudulently secured the warrant of arrest by concealing fact that a substantive order of the court stopping it from doing has not been set aside by a higher court.
Justice Abang had in a judgement delivered last week Thursday declared that until another judgement of his court which was delivered on January 6, 2014 is appealed against and set aside by the Court of Appeal, no extradition proceedings can commence against Kashamu. This fact NDLEA concealed from the court where it got orders.
He posited that the provisional warrant of arrest was obtained for want of jurisdiction in the sense that the judge’s attention was not drawn to the existing order barring NDLEA and the AGF from taking any further steps on the extradition process.
Justice Abang, consequently, declared that the proceedings at the Abuja High Court was a nullity.
