Dasuki’s detention: Panel to resume disciplinary hearing against AGF Malami

The Disciplinary Committee of Legal Practitioners’ Privileges
Committee’s hearing on the petition of alleged misconduct filed by
the family of a former national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki,
against the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr Abubakar
Malami (SAN), will resume on November 29, Punch report.

The LPPC is the body that confers the rank of Senior Advocate of
Nigeria on lawyers and reserves the power to withdraw the rank from
any lawyer on the grounds of ethical breaches.

The three-man panel of the LPPC led by the Chief Judge of Osun
State, Justice Adepele Ojo, had, on June 14, adjourned the hearing
of the petition indefinitely to afford the petitioners enough time
to regularise their complaint.

The Dasuki family had made the request for the indefinite
adjournment through their lawyer, Mr Victor Okwudiri, of the law
firm of Ahmed Raji (SAN), to carry out the regularisation by filing
a “verifying affidavit” which was originally not part of the
petition.

Malami’s team, led by Oladipo Okpeseyi (SAN), did not oppose the
request for adjournment.

It was learnt that the petitioners’ legal team had afterwards
carried out the regularisation which prompted the LPPC panel to
issue a new notice for the continuation of hearing on Friday.

Lawyers on the legal teams of both Malami and the petitioners
confirmed the development to our correspondent on Tuesday.

“The parties have all been served with the hearing notice for
the Friday’s proceedings,” one of the lawyers said.

The Dasuki family’s petition followed an alleged media comment
by Malami suggesting that Dasuki, despite meeting the conditions of
the latest bail granted to him by the Federal High Court in Abuja
on July 2, 2018, would not be released from the custody of the
Department of State Service on the grounds of national
security.

Copies of the petition were sent to the Chief Justice of
Nigeria, the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee, and the
Legal Practitioners’ Disciplinary Committee.

The petitions, dated July 23, 2018, were signed by Dasuki’s son,
Abubakar Dasuki, the detainee’s wife, Hajia Bintu Sambo-Dasuki, and
his nephew, Senator Umaru Dahiru.

The petitioners prayed that Malami be disciplined not just as a
lawyer but also as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria.

A copy of the petition read, “This petition has been written in
order for you to also investigate the propriety of the inflammatory
contemptuous and libelous statement made by Abubakar Malami, not
only as a lawyer, but also as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and
Attorney-General of the Federation.”

Dasuki has been in the custody of the Department of State
Service since December 2015 despite court orders granting him bail,
the latest being the order of the Court of Appeal in Abuja which
further reduced the bail conditions imposed on Dasuki by Justice
Ijeoma Ojukwu.

But in his reply filed before the LPPC panel and which was
obtained by The PUNCH, Malami said at no point in time did he “make
or utter such statement wrongly attributed to me.”

“It is observed that the alleged statement not verifiably
quoted, and where such statement was by any means reported and or
attributed to me by any media report, then such attributed
statement must have been quoted and or reported out of
context.”