In a stunning legal twist that has sent shockwaves through the political class, the Supreme Court has yanked former Jigawa State governor Sule Lamido and his two sons back into the dock over an alleged N1.35bn corruption scandal.

The apex court, in a unanimous decision by a five-member panel led by Justice Abubakar Sadiq Umar, tore up the earlier Court of Appeal ruling that had effectively set Lamido and his sons free, and ordered them back to the Federal High Court in Abuja to face the music.

This ruling dramatically resurrects the 37-count amended charge that had been buried by the Court of Appeal, putting the Lamido family once again at the centre of a high-stakes corruption trial that refuses to die.

Lamido, who ruled Jigawa State from 2007 to 2015, is on trial alongside his sons, Aminu and Mustapha, and two companies linked to them, Bamaina Holdings Limited and Speeds International Limited. They are accused of money laundering, abuse of office and handling illicit funds allegedly siphoned from state contracts.

According to the EFCC, the Lamido clan allegedly laundered about N1.35bn, said to be kickbacks from contractors handling Jigawa State projects during his tenure. The money was allegedly pushed through multiple bank accounts and corporate fronts in what investigators describe as a deliberate attempt to hide its dirty origin.

The anti-graft agency insists the funds were part of a web of illicit payments from companies that secured juicy state contracts, claiming Lamido and his sons used their influence to engineer and profit from the scheme. The EFCC says the trail of transactions paints a clear pattern of corruption and money laundering.

At the Federal High Court, the case had reached a crucial point. The EFCC had closed its case after parading witnesses and dumping documents before the court. Sensing an opening, Lamido’s camp moved swiftly, filing a no-case submission and arguing that the prosecution had failed to link them to any crime.

They claimed the EFCC’s evidence was speculative, weak and nowhere near enough to secure a conviction, urging the court to throw out the entire case without them saying a word in their own defence.

But Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu was not convinced. After reviewing the material before her, she ruled that the EFCC had raised serious questions that demanded answers from Lamido and his co-accused. She dismissed the no-case submission and ordered them to open their defence.

Unwilling to face the witness box, the defendants rushed to the Court of Appeal. In July 2023, the appellate court handed them a major victory, overturning Justice Ojukwu’s ruling, declaring that the EFCC had not properly tied them to the alleged offences and striking out the charges altogether.

The EFCC, furious and under pressure to prove it could still bite, took the fight to the Supreme Court. The agency accused the Court of Appeal of twisting the law and going too far by making final pronouncements at an early stage of the trial, instead of simply deciding whether there was enough evidence to make the defendants enter a defence.

Before the Supreme Court, the EFCC pointed to bank records, contract documents and witness testimonies, insisting that these at least raised serious red flags about how money flowed from state contractors into accounts linked to Lamido and his associates. The agency argued that such evidence could not just be brushed aside without hearing from the accused under oath.

The Supreme Court bought the EFCC’s argument. It ruled that the test for a no-case submission is not whether the prosecution has already proved its case beyond reasonable doubt, but whether there is some evidence on which a reasonable court might convict if the defence remains silent. On that basis, the justices said the Federal High Court was right to demand that Lamido and his sons enter their defence.

The apex court slammed the Court of Appeal for digging too deeply into the strength of the evidence at an interlocutory stage, stressing that such detailed evaluation should only happen after a full trial where both sides have presented their stories. With that, the Supreme Court wiped out the appellate court’s decision and restored the EFCC’s charges in full.