Presidency: Consider plea bargain for looters – Akinlaja

A legal practitioner, Mr. Dayo Akinlaja SAN at the weekend advised President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to consider plea-bargain being contemplated by treasury looter and their cronies.

The lawyer said considering plea-bargain would not only save the government from wasting resources on the prosecution of suspects but would also be of a great benefit to the members of the public.

Akinlaja, who was a former Attorney-General and Commissioner of Justice of Ekiti State, spoke with reporters in Akure, the Ondo State Capital.

Akinlaja explained that the reality of Nigerian judicial system was that it suffers from re-ordinate delay, stressing that the government should strategise on quick ways of recovering money from looters rather than spending more times in court.

His words, “On the issue of plea bargain, my position is that, it is useful in the area of recovery of looted funds. The reality of our judicial system is that it suffers from reordinate delay. With this, it is takes a long time for matters to be concluded.

“Even in the final analysis it is possible to recover money through criminal proceeding because of the length of time, I think it will be a welcome development.

“To my mind, the reason for plea bargain is for money to be recovered quickly.

“For instance, somebody is accused of stolen huge amount, the law says the person should be sentence to seven years imprisonment. We can say, if you are prepare to return this money that you are alleged to have stolen, we may say, return money and serve six months so that at least that will serve as measure of deterrent.

“What am saying is that where the gravity of the situation demands that the person should be jailed, such a person should be jailed, even it means reducing the length of time he or she will be spending in the jail.

“So, the person think that criminal proceeding will be handing on his neck for years and in the final analysis he may still be found guilty even when he is not even find guilty, the time that he would have wasted in going in and out of court and when these things are taking into consideration even the person accused may say let me make the refund.”

“In that case the society would have recovered money in a good time; lesser resources will be committed to the criminals’ proceedings.”

“Whatever we like it or not, the lawyers who are prosecuting and others involved are bound to be financially service.

“So in a way the plea bargain may be beneficial to the country and even to reduction of resources. I don’t think sending people to jail is the solution after all, after they are sent to jail, they will still be using the resources of the nation to feed them there.

“To my mind what is of greater importance is the recovering of the money. If plea bargain system would allow for money to be recovered I will support it.”

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