Nigeria's top judge handling
corruption cases against public officials has himself been charged with
bribery, court papers showed Saturday.
Danladi Umar was accused by the
country's anti-graft body EFCC of demanding 10 million naira (22,300
euros; $27,800) from a suspect "for a favour to be afterwards shown to
him in relation to the pending charge", according to court papers seen
by AFP.
The embattled judge was also alleged
to have received in 2012, through his personal assistant, the sum of 1.8
million naira from the same accused "in connection with the pending
case before him", the papers revealed.
Umar, who chairs the Code of
Conduct tribunal, last year cleared Senate president Bukola Saraki of
corruption charges linked to his time as a state governor.
The bribery allegations
against Umar were first brought to the fore when Saraki was charged with
corruption linked to false asset declaration and money laundering as
governor of his central Kwara state between 2003 and 2011.
Doubts about Umar's integrity grew further when the senate president was cleared in June 2017 of the charges against him.
The EFCC appealed the ruling and in
December, a panel of judges ordered a retrial of three of the 18 charges
initially brought against Saraki, Nigeria's third-ranking politician
after the president and vice-president.
The case has been one of the most
high-profile prosecutions since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power
in 2015, vowing to end graft and impunity at the highest level.
AFP
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