A top Nigerian judge handling corruption cases against public officials has himself been charged with bribery, court papers showed on Saturday.
The country’s anti-graft body EFCC is accusing Danladi Umar of demanding 10 million naira ($27 800) from a suspect “for a favour to be afterwards shown to him in relation to the pending charge”, court papers seen by the AFP news agency show.
In 2012, the embattled judge is alleged, through his personal assistant, to have received 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.
Bribery allegations against him were first brought to light 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.
The doubts against Umar’s grew even 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.
Umar’s case has been one of the most high-profile prosecutions since the country’s President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015, vowing to end graft and impunity at the highest level.
