DSS blames oversight for Dasuki’s absence in court

The Department of State Services (DSS) said its failure to bring former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki to an FCT High Court on Tuesday, for his ongoing N13.6 billion fraud trial was an oversight.

At the resumed hearing yesterday, counsel to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Rotimi Jacobs (SAN) told the court that he was told by the Director of Legal at the DSS that Tuesday's failure to bring Dasuki to court was not deliberate.

He said he made series of efforts to contact the director when he noticed that Dasuki was not in court again yesterday but was unable to reach him.

“I immediately contacted my client, the EFCC, who also approached the DSS. The information I received was that the first defendant (Dasuki) will not come to court today on the grounds that he's indisposed", Jacobs said while applying for an adjournment.

Yesterday made it the third time in less than one week that the DSS failed to produce Dasuki for trials being prosecuted by EFCC.

While not opposing the application for adjournment, Dasuki’s counsel, Chief Joseph Daudu (SAN), said the development “appears to be an inter-agency issue", while urging the court to place it on record that the defence was not trying to frustrate the trial as adjournment was at instance of the prosecution.

In his ruling, the trial judge, Justice Husseini Baba-Yusuf, while adjourning the trial to July 11 and 12 warned that "the proceedings of the court should not be taken lightly and extraneous considerations like strains between agencies should not be allowed to interfere with proceedings of the court.”